


Sometimes Hearts Break

by wild_moors



Category: Sword Art Online (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Arc: Fairy Dance, Broken Family, Family, Gen, Karma is Not Okay, Kinda Au-ish, Kinda canon compliant, More angst, SAO is over, Sequel to Retribution, Some Fluff, but not really, but she's real good at acting like it, everyone's lonely
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:07:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 48,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27177643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wild_moors/pseuds/wild_moors
Summary: Sword Art Online is over. The floating steel castle of Aincrad has disappeared, and with it, all the blood, sweat, tears, and joy that Karma has known for the last two years. Everything should be better now that she's back where they say she's supposed to be, in the real world.Right?(This is the sequel to Retribution, an Aincrad arc fic starring the same characters.)
Relationships: Heathcliff & OC, Kirigaya Kazuto | Kirito & OC, Kirigaya Kazuto | Kirito/Yuuki Asuna | Asuna, Yuuki Asuna | Asuna & OC
Comments: 30
Kudos: 17
Collections: Favourite Fanfictions





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...I was asked for a sequel by a few people (and I've had some ideas in mind for a while now), so here it is XD I won't put too much info up here, but if you haven't already, you'll probably need to read Retribution first to understand all of this.
> 
> Dang, it felt so freaking nostalgic, filling out all the character and relationship tags for the first time...wow. Here we are again :D
> 
> Also, just throwing this up here because I don't want it to get lost in the end notes: if you're looking for another Aincrad arc fic, you should check out 'Carry on, because life goes on' by deadnoble on AO3! It's a fic focusing more on the side characters, namely Liz, Argo, Klein, and a few others, that didn't get as much attention in canon. :)
> 
> Now, let's hop to it :D

_minutes to midnight, got you on my mind_ \- Sometimes Hearts Break (Nathan Wagner)

~~~

_The light pierced sharp, blinding and dizzying. She rubbed her eyes and her ears, wincing, her legs feeling weak as the wind pushed her this way and that; she was standing on top of the world, but it was terrifying._

_Words reached her as if she was underwater, no way to tell which way was up. It was all muffled; she strained to hear, to gather up the words like a starved person scrabbling for scattered crumbs._

_Whirring started to drone in her ears, and she flinched, pressing the heels of her hands against the base of her ears. She needed to hear those words. They meant something to her, something important, she knew it, what was this droning sound-_

_She’d heard it before. Where had she heard it before-_

Karma’s hand flies to her head as she jerks awake, only to encounter nothing but wayward strands of her own hair and a cold sweat. No NerveGear preparing to fry her brain. No danger. No piercing light. No sharp winds.

No voices. It’s just her.

Slowly, she lets her hand drop back to her side and falls back in bed, chest rising and falling as her breathing begins to even out again. Her room hasn’t been touched in two years except to be dusted occasionally. Everything is where she left it, but it still felt like walking into a stranger’s house; the smells were all wrong, her bed didn’t feel like hers, the voices she was looking for weren’t there.

“What I would give,” she whispers out loud, “to go home.”

~~~

Karma slouches in her too large, dark crimson hoodie against the side of the building, though her posture is the only part about her that’s relaxed. Eyes constantly scanning the streets, her gloved fingers occasionally ghost across the grip of a folding knife in her pocket. It feels uncomfortably light, and it makes her feel off-kilter, but at least it’s something.

“If only I could get away with carrying _kaa-san’s_ bokuto with me,” she sighs. A wooden sword isn’t exactly a replacement for the real thing, but it would make her feel slightly better.

Her eyes rove over the streets again, the action driven by some kind of instinctive unease. She’s being watched, she knows it, and she has been for a while.

Instinctively, she jumps back, fingers curling under her hoodie to reach for her knife-

“Oh,” she sighs, straightening up. “Give me a little warning next time, would you, Megu?”

Megu frowns, slowly lowering her outstretched hand. “I did. I called your name once when I turned the corner, and then twice more on the way down the street,” she says dryly, pushing her glasses up on the bridge of her nose with her pinky.

Karma—no, Natsuki—blinks, scratching her head. “Oh. Sorry.” It’s so unlike her to be this unaware.

“Either way, you’re the one who scared me,” Megu says peevishly, walking past her in her heeled ankle boots, nose in the air. “Jeez, almost gave me a heart attack.”

“My bad, my bad…”

A hint of a smirk from Megu lets Karma know she’s forgiven, and the two old friends start down the street together.

“Nice gloves, by the way,” Megu remarks, grabbing one of Karma’s hands, turning it over to admire the dark crimson knit gloves. “Pretty color. Still a bit warm for them, though, huh?”

Karma shrugs, gently tugging her hand out of Megu’s grip. “You’re the one who wears combat boots in summer.”

She lets Megu do all the talking, gossipping about her roommate and the love triangle (more like love pentagon) that said roommate is involved in. Listening with one ear, Karma watches the streets, unconsciously picking out all the little places that someone could be hiding in-

“Hey, are you even listening?”

“Yeah, ‘course.” At Megu’s disbelieving expression, Karma explains, “You were talking about the guy that got into a fight with the group chat, right?”

Megu still looks suspicious, but Karma was listening, really. Multitasking was a necessary skill to pick up. “Uh-huh…”

She keeps talking all the way into the cafe that’s their destination, an old haunt of theirs from their high school days. Although technically, Karma never finished high school, but that’s barely a concern in her mind these days.

“I haven’t been here in a while,” Megu says lightly. Translation: She hasn’t been here in two years, since Karma got stuck in SAO. “They better not have changed the menu too much.”

The college student lets out a little cheer when they peruse the menu, which has not changed much indeed. “We’ll have a kelp tea and a sakura milk tea-”

“Actually, can you make the milk tea a black coffee?” Karma interrupts quickly, and Megu gives her a weird look as the cashier adjusts the order.

After they get their drinks and pay, they find a table near the door and a window. Karma insists on taking the seat facing the door, alternating between watching people move around inside and outside the cafe.

“You hate coffee.”

Karma shrugs, staring down at her dark reflection swimming in the coffee. “‘Hate’ is a pretty strong word.” Although she does hate that she can’t drink it piping hot without burning her tongue. It was never a problem in Aincrad.

“You hated it,” Megu says bluntly, wrinkling her nose, “with a passion. And now you drink it black?”

All she can do is shrug again. Truth be told, she did drink tea, and she did it well into SAO. When the KoB got their first house, she was basically the de facto drink maker in the morning, since she usually got up much earlier than everyone else. For some reason, she was the only person who drank tea instead of coffee in the entire house back then. After getting tired of making both (and making enough coffee for a certain commander alone to fill a small lake), she converted and never looked back.

“Here, smile!”

Karma looks up in time for Megu to take a selfie picture of both of them. She slurps at her coffee while Megu types up a caption, no doubt to post it online, her painted nails clacking away a mile a minute.

She feels Megu lightly kick her under the table. “Go like the pic!”

Karma rolls her eyes in amusement. “Pushy,” she snorts, swiping her fingers down.

Whatever snark Megu was preparing turns into confusion, brow furrowed. Karma stares, nonplussed, at the definite lack of a holographic menu floating in front of her.

Her lungs start to burn after she stares long enough. She breathes in, and breathes out.

Hiding part of her face in her coffee, she pulls her phone out of her pocket, thumbing through the apps to click the little heart under the picture Megu just posted. Megu’s phone buzzes to alert her, but she barely reacts, still staring at Karma.

“How’s college?” Karma asks in a blatant attempt to redirect the conversation. Normally, she’s much better at this sort of thing…

Megu narrows her brown eyes, peering at her suspiciously through chocolate-colored bangs. “It’s fine.”

“Any annoying teachers?”

That sets her off, at least. Karma leans back in her seat, satisfied with her work, and sips at her coffee, happy to let Megu rant and vent.

She is happy. She _is._ Having her best friend back is almost the best thing ever that could’ve happened to her. Megu’s face was the first thing she saw when she woke up, and that’s something she’ll never take for granted.

At first, she was afraid that Megu would’ve replaced her, found new friends to go to the cafe with, new friends to play video games and gossip and hang out at the local parks to pet all the dogs with.

But she didn’t. She pulled Karma back into her life by the hand and didn’t take no for an answer. When she offhandedly mentioned that she hasn’t been to that cafe in, oh, about two years, and also actively turned down invites to go there, Karma could’ve cried. When Megu successfully defended her record in Super Smash Bros, cackling, the two of them sitting on the edge of her dorm bed, eyes glued to the tiny screen, Karma laughed for the first time since she woke up.

She _is_ happy.

It’s just not the same. It’s not _that_ kind of happy.

_That_ kind of happy is found under warm lights, to the sound of NPC drums and flutes and harps and boots tapping to a rhythm (or not, if you’re like Uzala and have two left feet).

_That_ kind of happy is found in a shower of rainbow pixels, raining down in little pieces of light after a successful boss fight, when she’s breathless and just about on her last legs, adrenaline rushing, heart still threatening to burst out of her chest.

_That_ kind of happy is found in the quiet, in the rich colors of mahogany wood soaking up the light of a single lamp, in soft voices and warm hands and the luxury of simply _being_ with someone who’s like you, who has found security in the knowledge that they are not the only broken thing in the world.

_That_ kind of happy is the kind she left behind in Aincrad.

The kind he took with him when he left.

~~~

_“Okaeri, kaa-san,”_ Karma calls without looking up as the door opens.

With their chubby cat Botamochi winding around her ankles, she checks on the noodles, her stomach grumbling as she sniffs delicately. Cooking in real life is much harder than in Aincrad, at least from where Karma was standing. She never did any of it, but she liked keeping Asuna company while the brunette did it. Then again, Asuna had her cooking maxed out, so maybe it would’ve been harder otherwise.

The aroma of cooking food brings memories out of the cupboards where they were gathering dust, memories of easy conversations and jokes, of a sharp eye and a quick hand swatting Karma away when she tried to steal morsels off the plate.

She slams the door shut on those memories; it doesn’t do any good to let them bounce her around at their whims, but here in the warmth of her apartment, in the company of family, she feels more alone than ever, her own sister in a place too far away for even a phone call to reach.

Moving to where the eggs are boiling, she quickly turns off the heat and lifts the small pot off the stove, although she’s caught off guard when she nearly drops it. Cursing her complete lack of strength at the moment, she carefully drags the pot over to the sink with both hands. Steam pours out as she empties the hot water, leaving boiled eggs behind.

Without thinking, she reaches in to grab the eggs, only to recoil with a quiet hiss, quickly turning on the cold water to run her hand under it. Her dark red wool gloves are discarded on the counter next to her, an unfortunate necessity; the disposable latex gloves she’s wearing are too thin to block the heat.

“Really gotta stop doing that,” she mutters. Pain is still a novelty, and still not in a good way. “I can practically _see_ you rolling your eyes at me. Stop it.”

She’s not hearing voices. She just wishes she was. Maybe then she wouldn’t feel so lonely.

Leaving the eggs to cool, she scoops udon into three bowls; she tries to focus on the lingering pain in her fingers rather than that in her chest, a loneliness that even Megu’s spunky presence doesn’t stave off.

“Mmm, something smells delicious,” her mother’s voice comes from the living room, sounding exhausted.

“Natsuki made udon tonight,” her father informs her mother excitedly as he sets the table.

Karma starts slightly, a bit of soup slopping onto the floor, at the sound of the unfamiliar name-

Then her brain catches up, and she quickly wipes away the spilled soup before Botamochi can get his greedy paws in it. She wonders when she’ll get used to the sound of what should be her own name again, if ever.

Her mother goes to shower—the hospital smell of antiseptic is hard to wash out, especially when she’s been working there for such long hours ever since SAO ended—and her father comes to help her with dinner.

“You really don’t have to-”

“I know,” she says, sprinkling a bit of green onion in each bowl. “But there’s nothing better to do, and I’ll have to learn to cook eventually.”

Lie. Well, not really—half-truth. After being poisoned at dinner out in the field by a former ally and then nearly murdered by their orange player compatriots, Karma made a point to never accept cooked food that Asuna didn’t make, or that she didn’t keep a literal eye on during the entire process.

Old habits die hard, she supposes.

“Plus, you and _kaa-san_ both get home later these days, so I might as well,” she says breezily, turning to pick up her bowl.

Anything but the truth, because the truth doesn’t sit well with her either.

They sit down to eat dinner with the TV playing in the background. Karma chitchats with her parents, asking them about their days, nodding amicably while they talk.

The food tastes like cardboard, like it has every day since she woke up. Her parents don’t show any indication of noticing, and she follows recipes to the letter, so she figures it’s just another Karma thing.

_“...say that Kayaba Akihiko, the engineer of the NerveGear and the creator of Sword Art Online, is still at large-”_

“-poor kid, he got a blood clot in his leg and it’ll probably be some time before he can walk again,” her mother is saying, and Karma tries to tune her out.

_“-some say that he is the one responsible for the three hundred SAO players who still have yet to awake.”_

Ridiculous. He promised to set them all free, and he never broke a promise. Her fists clench on the table.

“...ki. Natsuki?”

She blinks when her father suddenly stands up, almost tripping over his chair to grab the remote. Before she can say a word, he quickly turns off the TV, plunging the apartment into awkward silence.

“I’m sorry, I should’ve been paying more attention,” he apologizes, sitting back down uneasily. “You shouldn’t have to watch—I know it was—I mean...well.”

Karma doesn’t miss the split second look her parents exchange. Her father offers an awkward smile. She’s getting so good at this that she smiles right back without missing a beat.

They have no idea. It was impossible to keep quiet at first, with how many people saw the end happen, and stories circulated on the media for some time. The government reacted quickly though, and they shut them down--ostensibly to protect her privacy, but they just didn’t want the ‘hero’ to be someone with so much blood on her hands. It’s fine with her; she never needed or wanted to be a hero, and she doesn’t need the complication of the people around her knowing who she really is.

But they think she’s fragile. They’re wrong. She’s weak, but not so easily broken. But it takes effort she doesn’t care to expend to convince them otherwise, so she tucks that part of her away, the sharp edges they don’t want to see.

~~~

Karma pulls the door shut, eyes doing a precursory sweep around her room. She locks the door behind her with a _click_ and goes to the window, drawing back the blinds. She sweeps the streets carefully until she’s sure nothing’s out of the ordinary.

With a sigh, she flops back onto her bed in the corner. She takes out the knife in her pocket and stows it under her pillow before reaching for the shelf above the headboard.

Her breath fogs up on the gray, translucent visor of the NerveGear as she runs her hands over the cool blue metal, pressing her forehead against the ‘forehead’ of the device.

“It’s all your fault,” she whispers, a knot of sorrow tightening in the spot under where her necklace should be. “I don’t trust anyone anymore…It really sucks, you know.”

_Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzz-_

She grabs her phone. _“Moshi moshi,_ Kirito-kun,” she says lazily, sitting up. “What’s up?”

 _“Hey, Karma,”_ his young voice replies. _“You remember that Kikuoka-san I was telling you about, right? The one who told me where Asuna was?”_

She pulls her knees up, tucking the scuffed and dented NerveGear in close to her chest, as close as possible _(still not enough)._ “Sure, I remember.”

_“He had a few questions for me that I thought you’d be better equipped to answer.”_

She stifles a sigh. “Yeah, sure, fire away.”

After she woke up, in exchange for information on the game as one of the most knowledgeable players, she was given back her NerveGear, as well as the real life contact information of some of her closest friends. Kirito didn’t exactly fall into that group—to be honest, she has very mixed feelings on the guy, for various reasons—but she didn’t hesitate to contact people like him, Argo, and other acquaintances that were important in SAO.

_“Um, actually, he wanted to talk to you in person.”_

She blinks, nonplussed, still hugging the NerveGear possessively with one arm. “He wants to fly all the way out here just to talk to me?” she asks in disbelief.

_“Well...yeah.”_

“I mean, I get that I probably had the most experience with orange players out of everyone in the game, but it’s not like you never ran into the bastards either.”

 _“No,”_ he agrees, with more weight in his voice than any seventeen-year-old kid ought to have, _“but you’re also the one who...y’know. Cleared the game.”_

“Oh,” she says, very smartly. “That.”

Kirito laughs awkwardly. _“Yeah...that.”_

Is it stupid to say that it feels almost irrelevant? Sure, the death game they’ve been fighting and fighting and fighting for two years is over. She’s not sure if she’s any better off for it.

Besides, the bomb was dropped before the game was ended. It just feels like a side effect added onto...well, the other thing.

“You were the one who was supposed to do it,” she argues half-heartedly. “I kinda stole your thunder, to be fair.”

“What matters is that it’s over.”

She closes her eyes, letting her phone fall to the bed next to her. “...Yeah.”

It is well and truly over. Two years of trying to conquer the floating castle, of fighting monsters and demons worse than monsters, of staining her hands so red that it’ll never come out. Two years of tears and grief and sorrow and anguish, of loss and death and-

Two years of wandering Aincrad, seeing all the landscapes she’d never be able to in real life, of late nights spent talking and laughing and just _being._

_“Would you like to live with your soul in the grave?”_

“Can I take it back?” she whispers to the empty room. “I know I said I’d try, but I wanna take it back.” She asks this every day.

_“...Karma? You there?”_

With a sigh, she picks her phone back up. “Yeah?”

_“So...what should I tell him? Kikuoka-san?”_

“Sure. Whatever. What’s one more?” she sighs, tracing a scratch in her NerveGear with one fingernail.

 _“Um, okay. I’ll let him know.”_ He hesitates, with all the awkwardness of a teenage boy. _“How’s rehab?”_

“It’s fine. My body came through pretty intact. It’s mostly just getting my strength back.” Her mother and all the other hospital staff are being run ragged. Many people woke up with some kind of physical issue from being asleep for so long. Karma is one of the lucky few who didn’t.

“How’s Asuna?” she asks quietly.

Kirito sighs, his tone similarly lackluster. _“Same, I guess.”_

Waking up only to find that the one comfort she’d expected wouldn’t be there was crushing. She has Uzala and Kili and all of her other friends from KoB, and she calls them regularly enough. But only Asuna could ever come close to being a substitute for _him_ in any capacity. Only Asuna could ever come close to understanding. And she never did anything to deserve to be trapped still.

So _why?_

“Alright, go to bed,” she says, closing her eyes. “You’re a growing kid, you need your sleep.”

Kirito snorts in amusement. _“Okay, okay. Good night.”_

“Yeah, good night…”

With a sigh, she sets her phone back down on her nightstand. Reaching for the shelf again, she grabs the shiny new book she just bought a few days ago and cracks it open, thumbing through the pages with a gloved hand. The spine still creaks a bit; it’s that new.

She reads obsessively, picking apart every word. Looking for something, anything that’ll give her some insight. She’s read this book four times front to back already in the four days since she bought it, and she’s learning something new every time she rereads it.

It takes her back, even, to late nights when she knew she should be sleeping because she might have to fight for her life alone tomorrow, but she just couldn’t drift off. She’d crack open the book and read until the words drift off the page and lull her to sleep. He did take his handle from this book, so it would almost feel like he was there with her, his steady presence setting her at ease until she can sleep at last.

But it’s different now. As she shuts the book about two hours later, her mind is buzzing with questions demanding answers where there aren’t any. She still can’t help but dwell on them anyways, even though she knows it can’t be good for her.

She checks the time. On silent feet, she pads out of her room and slips into her parents’ room, quiet as a ghost. After listening for several minutes, she deems their breathing to be even and deep enough that they’re definitely asleep.

About ten minutes later, she returns to her room with coffee—probably not the best decision to make minutes to midnight, but she can’t bring herself to care. It’s the only thing she can taste these days, which is ironic, considering she couldn’t stand the taste of it only two years ago.

She drags the chair out from her desk and sits down, setting the NerveGear on the desk in front of her while nursing her coffee.

“I bet you don’t have coffee, wherever you are,” she mumbles, and slurps pointedly, only to hiss in pain when it burns her tongue. Gritting her teeth, she slouches and wriggles lower into her massive, oversized hoodie, drawing her knees up underneath it and pulling it tighter around herself.

“I don’t like being hurt,” she mutters petulantly, curling her bare toes around the edge of her chair. It’s comfortable, but not comfortable in the familiar way she got used to.

She got used to it all, and sometimes, she never even remembered that they were all trying to leave it behind.

Suddenly, she realizes that without even meaning to, she brought two cups instead of one, and tears prickle in her eyes when she realizes that she doesn’t need to and can’t bring him coffee anymore. As minute and completely insignificant as it is, it leaves just as big a hole as the rest.

“I miss everything,” she whispers into her knees.

The NerveGear doesn’t respond, and the coffee grows cold.

~~~

In the morning, she wakes up in her bed. She could swear she fell asleep in her chair; her back is sore enough to prove it. And when she gets up, both coffees are drained, the remnants dried and crusty at the bottom.

“Don’t be cruel,” she accuses wearily, because the last thing she needs is to get her hopes up...again.

~~~

 _waist deep in thought because when I think of you, I don't feel so alone_ \- Vanilla Twilight (Owl City)

 _maybe it's good you're gone, but it still leaves me wanting you to finally just tell me the truth_ \- Perfect Doesn't Last (Beth Crowley)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As one of my real life friends with a penchant for sarcasm enjoys saying, Everything Is Great. SAO's over, most people are free and getting back to normal! What could possibly be wrong with this? Everything is great.
> 
> Karma's real name is Akane Natsuki, but I still use the name Karma in narration because that's how she still thinks of herself. She lives in Miyazaki prefecture, which is in Kyushu. Her parents are normal (her mother's a nurse, and her father is a high school teacher). Her friend Megu is pretty normal (she's the same age as Karma, 19-20 ish, but one year ahead in school, so she's in college right now).
> 
> Karma...looks normal.
> 
> Did I mention that everything is great?
> 
> Anyways, different story format for this. The mini chapter/episodes thing wasn't going to work for this one. There's gonna be more chapters, but shorter ones on average. This is probably one of the longer ones (I say probably, because whenever I say stuff like this, it ends up being a straight up lie XD) Let's see how this goes.
> 
> The centered lines at the beginning and end of the chapters are song lyrics. I was originally just going to do one per chapter at the beginning...but there were just too many good ones and it got just a little out of hand XD (i.e. these lyrics just...go together so well) I listen to a bunch of them while writing, and I cannot tell you how much time I have spent picking these lyrics. Every time I think they're good the way they are, I stumble upon a new song and I'm like 'omg I have to include this' and it's kind of a problem :D Overall story title is a song by Nathan Wagner (amazing artist), and I feel like it pretty neatly sums up how Karma feels towards Heathcliff now.
> 
> My other idea for the title was 'A Choice to Change', a little like the last chapter of Retribution, because it has a double meaning too: she can change her choice that she made, and/or she can choose to change. Ehhhh? XD (Spoiler (not really): she'll have to do a little bit of both in this fic ;))
> 
> Anyways, this is going to be a very different story from Retribution in some ways. Some things will be the same...some things won't.
> 
> Let me know what you think :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trust issues, hooray! And much thanks to Lynxkitten on AO3 for giving me the idea with the necklace! :)
> 
> And thanks for the reviews and comments on the last chapter! You guys are awesome, and I really appreciate it! :D

_I don't want them to know the way I loved you; I don't think they'd accept it_ \- Hurts Like Hell (Fleurie)

~~~

Karma barely remembers when she woke up. That period of time is hazy, like she was just floating through the days in a fog.

Megu cried. She knows that much, because Megu was hugging her so hard that she nearly passed out, according to the nurses—Karma doesn’t remember, because she’d just come from a world where the air she breathed wasn’t necessary.

Her parents cried. Well, she doesn’t remember that, but they probably did. They cried a lot. Probably because they were happy.

Karma cried too. She still does. It’s cathartic, sometimes, but the pain always comes back. In a weird way, she kind of likes watching her tears roll down the surface of the NerveGear, the droplets getting sidetracked and caught in the dents and scratches in the material. Rarely does one find its way to the end unhindered.

Nothing survived him unscathed.

She cried when she woke up, because the only thing she remembered was his back. The way his hand seemed to leech the warmth from her, instead of suffusing her with strength like he always used to.

She cried when she realized she was back in the real world, because he didn’t come with her. And she cried because even after everything he did, she still wanted him with her.

“What about this one?”

Karma glances up at the sound of Megu’s voice. “Mmm...there’s no red on it,” she says, disappointed.

Megu sighs and returns the necklace. “So, mind telling me what’s up with your sudden fixation on cross-shaped jewelery? Did you suddenly become religious and everything while my back was turned?”

Megu always talks about it like that. She likes to pretend that she was the one who was gone for two years, not Karma, or that she just got a little far ahead and is waiting for Karma to catch up. She doesn’t like being left behind. That, Karma can empathize with.

“No reason,” Karma says, almost apologetically, because there was once a time when they told each other everything. What they had for breakfast, how they did on their latest tests (they always had different ones, since Megu was a year ahead in school), what they thought of the new bubble tea flavor at the cafe. Everything, really.

Megu stares at her, her expression unreadable. Karma pastes on a convincing, bland smile, almost challenging her to object.

“How about this one?” Megu finally asks, holding up another necklace.

“...It’s too chunky.”

While Megu trudges off to keep searching, Karma touches the spot under her shirt, above her sternum. It was barely noticeable, just a simple piece of jewelry, but its absence is something she can’t stand. And she knows that even if they find the perfect replica, that absence is never going to go away; it came and made itself a home here, in the pit of her windpipe so it can sneak up on her whenever she’s not paying attention and claw the breath from her lungs in a way that has nothing to do with physically breathing.

She doesn’t mind it so much. It justifies her, in a way.

Everyone is still celebrating the end of the death game. Of course, people are still mourning too, now that they know—really know, for sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt—that the loved ones whose heartbeat lines went flat on the monitor are never, ever coming back.

She’s still mourning. The pain makes her feel justified.

It confirms it. She doesn’t belong here anymore.

~~~

Karma silently closes her parents’ bedroom door and slinks back to her own. Reaching into the slight gap between her bed and the wall, she withdraws her mother’s old bokuto. For at least twenty years, it’s been gathering dust in the closet. They won’t notice.

They live on the third floor, and there’s an elevator, but she decides to take the stairs for some extra exercise. By the time she gets to the roof, she’s breathless and already sweating. The night air is cool and crisp, but it doesn’t smell nearly as clean as it does in Aincrad.

They all think she’s crazy, but they only care about how many players she’s killed (more than she can remember). Maybe they’re only half-wrong.

It’s not only because of the body count, really.

Ten minutes later, Karma staggers with a breathless grunt as her knee gives out from beneath her, sending her sprawling to the floor. Ignoring the pain from her scraped hand and the burning exhaustion spreading through her whole body, she rolls to her feet lithely. Even more important than staying up on your feet is quickly springing back up when you’re knocked down.

She brings the old wooden practice sword around to bear again. It’s lighter and wider than her sword was, but it’s not like she has any other options.

And her sword is the least of her worries. She is _seriously_ out of shape—which is to be expected after two years of being asleep, and the people at rehab already tell her that she’s in better condition than most. But even now, running through a three, four hit sword skill has her sweating buckets and her lungs burning like she ran a mile.

“And forget about the ones that have me doing all those flips and stuff,” she mutters, mopping her face on her shoulder.

Her sweat-slicked grip slides uncomfortably on the wooden handle of the sword, and she frowns down at it, thinking of ways to remedy this while catching her breath.

“Okay...one more,” she decides.

She takes up her stance, settling easily into the familiarity of it, her feet moving smoothly to circle an imaginary opponent.

With a grunt of effort, she lunges, slashing from hip to shoulder before pivoting on one foot, drawing her sword back. Right before she drives the blade forward, she drops, bracing her right hand against the rough asphalt to scythe her fake enemy’s feet from underneath them before she lunges.

_CLACK!_

The tip of the sword comes in contact with the asphalt, and she rolls forward, reaching forward to brace herself-

-and encounters nothing but thin air.

She blinks, staring down at the street. Even so late at night (or early in the morning), there are still cars coming and going, leaving streaks of lights as afterimages in her eyes.

“Whoops,” she mumbles, blinking owlishly at the five floor drop down to the deserted sidewalk. It’s a weird feeling, like the kind you get when you almost but not quite miss a step, a little misalignment in your gravity before you pull yourself back in order.

Except this is a way longer drop than just a missed stair step. Should she feel more alarmed?

“Ohhhh, right…” She taps the flat of the blade against the side of her head, tsk-tsk-ing to herself, staring down at the street far below her. “Dummy. Safe zones don’t exist anymore.”

_Safe doesn’t exist anymore._

With a loud sigh, she lets herself fall backwards onto her back, kicking her legs up in the air before letting them drop over the edge of the building. The asphalt is rough, but her oversized hoodie tied around her neck like a cape (or a cloak) cushions her back against it. She spreads her arms out to the side, the wooden sword clattering softly against the roof.

“The stars are so _dull,”_ she says, wrinkling her nose up at the night sky. “Everything is so _dull.”_

The flat midnight blue has nothing on the rich, velvety satin of the Aincrad night, in which she could see actual depth in the sky. The stars embedded in the sky look like fake diamonds, their glitter nowhere near as bright as the tiny little beacons that each Aincrad star was, and it makes her mad.

And knowing that wherever he is, he won’t be looking at the same blank sky and the same dull stars, makes her feel even angrier and even lonelier.

“What did I even come back for?” she huffs, scowling at the night sky like it’s the sky’s fault. “I don’t like you. I really don’t like you.”

She’s not sure who she’s talking to (she’s not sure why either). The boring real world? Or the one who made the world that shimmered so darkly that nothing else would ever compare?

_Oh, Asuna...what have I become?_

She is nothing without stories to call her own. As gruesome as her story was in Aincrad, it was hers.

A low, keening whine builds in the back of her throat, like a kicked puppy, and she kicks her legs up in the air before bringing them back down, using the momentum to sit herself up so abruptly that she sways over the drop, her tears dropping like liquid crystal over the edge. She digs her teeth into her lip, pretending that the tears and the blood dripping onto the sidewalk far, far below are from the pain her nerves are sending to her brain, and not from the phenomenon that people like to call _heartbreak._

Come morning, she’ll be normal. She promises she’ll be normal. Her parents, Megu, the rehab workers who are probably betting on when their resident certified murderer will snap, the government workers from the SAO Case Victims Rescue Force who ask thinly veiled questions in attempts to gauge her sanity—she’ll give none of them a single reason to doubt.

She’s got plenty of practice, after all, and the one person who could ever see through her isn’t here.

~~~

Karma’s first thought is, why is this guy trying to bribe her with snacks when she already agreed to meet him?

Politely declining with a lackluster smile that stretches uncomfortably at her scabbed lips, she sits down in the seat across from Kikuoka. He says he’s just another member of the SAO case, but if he flew all the way out to Kyushu just to talk to her, he must be one of the higher ups.

_“Seriously? He’s coming out here just to talk to you?” Megu asked incredulously when Karma told her she had to decline their meet-up._

_“Yeah. A friend told me that the guy had some questions he had to ask me about.”_

_Megu gave her a disbelieving look. “And he couldn’t ask anyone else? What, were you one of the bigwig players in the game, then? Fighting on the front lines to clear the game?”_

_The light-hearted, teasing tone indicated that she had_ no idea _. Karma shoved her playfully, snickering. “I’m loving the doubt, y’know. Who says I wasn’t?”_

_Megu wrinkled her nose, grinning. “Yeah, right. Well, whatever, wanna grab a drink at the cafe?”_

Kikuoka is all friendly smiles. “How’s physical rehabilitation going for you, Akane-san?”

“It’s fine.” Everyone there is waiting for her to snap, she knows it.

He hums, flicking through a file on her; there’s not much in there. She was never exactly outstanding enough in any way to keep tabs on up until now.

“You live with your parents, right? Your mother’s a nurse, your father a high school teacher? How are they doing?”

“They’re fine, just tired,” she says with a shrug. “My mom’s dealing with all the kids who woke up with more severe physical problems, and my dad recently moved to a school further away, so the commute is longer.” She knows he doesn’t care, and he probably already knows, but there’s no point in being all defensive when he hasn’t given her a reason to—yet.

“Mmm,” he hums, nodding amicably. “So, you’re a friend of Kirigaya-kun?”

“Kirito-kun? I wouldn’t say we’re friends, but we saw enough of each other.”

“He had good things to say about you,” he informs her cheerfully.

She leans back in her seat with a humorless smile, lifting her chin with a sigh, fingers curling under her hoodie to touch the grip of her knife.

“That’s sweet of him. He was probably one of the only ones, hmm?” she asks, a hint of a laugh in her voice, dry as a desert.

Kikuoka’s good mood falters, though he regains control quickly and smiles, deigning not to answer that. “Well, I’ve got all the notes from the SAO case worker who spoke with you before, but I’d just like to rehash a few basic points, if you don’t mind. You were a member of a guild called the Knights of the Blood Oath?”

“That’s right.”

“Could you describe your role within the guild for me?”

Karma sighs, propping up her face on her hand. And so it begins.

“I was basically just a solo player with a guild, really. I used to be the leader of one of the three teams within our primary army, alongside my friend Asuna. I stepped down from that role a few months in. I wasn’t suited for a leadership role, and Asuna was. I still participated in boss fights with the rest of the guild, though. I was one of the strongest players.”

He looks at her expectantly for more information—as if she’s that easy to crack. She smiles politely, silent, forcing him to broach the subject himself.

“Your guildmates and other members of the front lines say that you were rather...close to your guild leader, correct?”

Memories bombard her, the shrapnel coming at her from all sides, bypassing her defenses without a moment’s respite—maybe she left fissures in her defenses on purpose.

“What do you mean by that?” she asks, unblinking; her tone is almost pleasant, but not quite, in the almost-a-threat tone that she has perfected.

He meets her gaze, eyes narrowing slightly behind the rectangular lenses of his glasses. She dares him to push her.

He does not. “You said you were a solo player within the guild. What were your duties, then?”

“To the guild? Whatever they needed, really, if I had time. Getting info on good hunting grounds, farming mats, helping them grind levels if I was bored. Sometimes I’d go with the scout team as extra muscle to get a look at the bosses,” she says lightly, amused.

_If you want to know,_ ask _. I can do this all day._

Kikuoka shuffles through his files meticulously, but she can tell from looking at his eyes that he’s not really reading them, just stalling. She could move the interrogation—ahem, conversation—along, ask why he couldn’t talk to Kirito, but it’s not like she has anywhere else to be. If he doesn’t have the guts to confront her, then she won’t bother.

Finally, he clears his throat, adjusting his glasses. “Is the guild name Laughing Coffin familiar to you?”

She coughs loudly, burying her mouth against her elbow in an attempt to conceal her shark-like grin. Really? Just, really?

“Are you alright?” he asks awkwardly. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like some tea-”

“No, thank you, I’m fine,” she reassures him, glad she has an excuse to be smiling now; she quickly licks away a drop of blood that beads from her chapped lip, newly cracked from grinning so widely. “Yes, of course, I can’t think of a player in SAO who didn’t know of Laughing Coffin.” Except for those who cooped themselves up in a room in the Town of Beginnings for seven hundred and thirty days, maybe.

“You’ve had several encounters with their guild members, correct?” he asks diplomatically, clearly making a valiant attempt to ignore her all but openly laughing at him.

“Several more than I would’ve liked, yes,” she agrees lightly.

“How would you describe their behavior?” he inquires, folding his fingers together on the tabletop. “Would you say they’d been forcefully coerced into harming other pl-”

“Oh, no, most of them were happily murdering people, according to the creed of their leader,” she says bluntly. At his ‘go on’ hand motion, she explains, “Their leader apparently told them that they couldn’t be blamed for the deaths that occurred in this game, because the creator of the game was to be blamed, so they could go crazy and have all the fun they wanted killing people.”

Her tone grew sharp somewhere along the line, and she dials it back a little. “There were some green players that they forced into their ranks so they could infiltrate safe zones, but I don’t believe there were many. They killed a lot more than they tried to bring to their side.”

Kikuoka sighs. “So, many red players were willingly committing these crimes…”

“I’d say so, yeah.” She does feel bad for him, just a bit. That must be a nightmare to deal with, deciding what constitutes a crime committed under duress versus the alternative. No one fit to pass judgement was actually in the game (and honestly, there really is no one fit to pass judgement, former player or not, in her humble opinion). How can they decide like that?

“How organized were they, would you say? Did they mostly act independently, or was there some sort of structure involved? You mentioned a leader.”

“Yeah...Laughing Coffin rose on New Year’s,” she sighs, scratching her head as the memory resurfaces. “Went on a mass killing spree, targeting lone players or small parties who wandered out of the safe zones to celebrate. And it’s not like _all_ orange and red players operated under the name of Laughing Coffin, but their activity grew a lot more dangerous after they saw how damaging organized crime could be. Before, they were pretty disorganized, mostly just smaller parties and guilds going around wreaking havoc on the lower floors.”

“And you were someone who was regularly tasked with dismantling these smaller groups of criminals, correct?”

Oh, here they go. “I wasn’t the only one. Plenty of green guilds rose to the task to defend their turf.”

“But you were the only one acting totally by yourself.”

“Probably.”

She hears him sigh again, shuffling through more papers. “You’ve been going to the mandatory therapy sessions, correct? The ones for players who were forced to take lives within the game?”

Karma resists the urge to roll her eyes bitterly. “Sure I have. They’re at the place where I go for physical rehab.” It’s not like she could get out of it.

“Your therapist’s notes state that you’ve been...unresponsive,” he says, making eye contact with her sternly—as if he could intimidate her into cooperating. The notion is laughable.

She’s stared down bosses four times her height with four times the number of HP bars, if not more. She’s been surrounded by so many red players that she couldn’t even pick a person to stare down. She’s been on death’s doorstep; she rang the doorbell, blew a raspberry in their face, and skipped away to live another day.

She also knows that she’s not the only one being forced into therapy, and she knows there are far more who actively seek it out. Her therapist is surely stretched thin, just like all the others in the nation, and she looks for all intents and purposes like a fully functional human being. She’s eating, drinking, sleeping, hanging out with friends, on good terms with her family. They may have her records, they may know that her body count is higher than even she remembers, but their capacity to think about her will surely run out sooner or later when they have cases that look far more pressing.

That and, even if she was the only person going to therapy, even if there was a whole team of people working on her, there’s no way in hell she would ever crack.

She’s good at that. She had two years of guilt and sorrow and grief to build her perfect mask, and that’s one thing she didn’t leave behind in Aincrad. There was only one person she ever trusted to fully take off that mask around, and _he’s not here_.

Like _hell_ she’ll ever trust a stranger with the memories she holds so dear—the good, the bad, the blissful, the painful, and everything in between.

They never saved her life. They never believed in her when she was hesitant to believe in herself. They never said the right things to bolster her confidence when it dropped. They never _saw_ her with her hair disheveled from a fight, red pixels like blood pouring from her wounds, stumbling out of exhaustion, they never _saw_ her hands stained red.

If he’s not here to care about her _(or at least act like he did)_ , then what’s the point?

“I’m sorry,” she says in the same not quite pleasant tone, “I’m not sure what you mean by that.” He opens his mouth, and she bulldozes right over him. “I’m also not sure why you are asking me this. I was under the impression that you had important questions to ask me, questions that couldn’t be answered by Kirito-kun, arguably one of the most knowledgeable players in the game. I had to call off a nice day out with my best friend today, so I’d appreciate it if we didn’t waste time here, Kikuoka-san. I’ve been really nice about answering those important questions so far, haven’t I?”

“...You have,” he agrees, nodding perfunctorily, “and I’m grateful-”

“You’re welcome,” she chirps; she knows her smile is all teeth and doesn’t reach her eyes. “I’d be happy to keep answering these important questions of yours.”

She makes sure he knows what she considers _important,_ and she makes sure he knows that what she doesn’t want to give, he will _never_ have.

Karma will be nice about it, of course. She will never snap, not at them, not in front of them. That right—the right to see her at her weakest, when she has no control over her own emotions—is one that they do not have. That they and anyone else will never have.

She learned her lesson the first time.

~~~

As soon as she gets home, she calls up Kirito, sprawled out on her bed with her feet kicked up on the headboard.

_“Hello? Karma?”_

“So, I talked to Kikuoka today,” she snickers, and Kirito sighs.

_“Was it that bad?”_

“No, no, not at all, we had a great time. Oh, but he did drop something that I had to give back to him.” When Kirito doesn’t speak, she eggs him on gleefully, like a little kid who did well on a test waiting for her friends to ask. “Ask. Ask what he dropped.”

_“...I don’t know. What did he drop?”_ he asks, resigned.

“A listening bug. On the inside of my sleeve, probably when he shook my hand really vigorously. So clumsy of him. You should’ve seen his face.”

_“Oh my god,”_ Kirito groans, followed by the sound of him facepalming. _“Karma.”_

“What was I supposed to do, just let it stay there?” she asks peevishly, rolling onto her stomach.

_“Well, you noticing it makes it seem like you have something to hide,”_ he reasons, sounding reluctant. _“I can’t believe you actually noticed something like that.”_

“I didn’t survive actively hunting murderers for one and a half years for nothing,” she shoots back with an indignant sniff. “Really, you’d think after he saw my body count that even _I_ had to guess at, he wouldn’t underestimate me.”

_“We’re in the real world now.”_

“And it only makes me ten times more paranoid.”

Another sigh, followed by keyboard noises. _“Are you mad?”_

She snorts. “Angry mad, or crazy mad?”

_“I don’t know,”_ Kirito says, sounding mildly aggrieved. _“Both?”_

“Well, I’m about as sane as the next person,” she says breezily. “And as for angry mad? I wouldn’t waste effort being angry. It’s really just funny, although it wouldn’t be if I hadn’t noticed,” she admits, kicking her feet lazily in the air. “What do they think I’m hiding anyways? Maybe they think I was in cahoots with the red players all along?”

The keyboard noises stop, but Kirito doesn’t speak.

“...Oi, Kirito-kun.”

He makes an uncomfortable noise, accompanied by drumming fingers. _“...I think they think maybe you know something about Kayaba.”_

“...Right, you can tell Kikuoka I’m never talking to him ever again,” she says flatly, her voice belying the way her fist clenches in the sheets, knuckles whitening. “He’s an idiot if he thinks we’re working together or something, and if I talk to him again, I’m afraid I might lose brain cells.”

She hits the red ‘end call’ button and buries her face in her hands.

“You think I knew anything?” she whispers, curling up into a tiny ball.

With an anguished snarl that no one is home to hear, she grabs the covers and violently yanks them over herself.

~~~

_“Oh, I fell in love with you...and you said you loved me too.”_ \- Sometimes Hearts Break (Nathan Wagner)

_“I was made to fall in love with you, with every breath, with every move.”_ \- Love (Nathan Wagner)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kinda wish SAO focused a little more on how SAO survivors had to adapt to the real world after two years of being in Aincrad. They just sorta did a timeskip two months ish forward to move on with Fairy Dance, which I get is for plot reasons and stuff. But I'm sure SAO changed everyone's lifestyles and behavior, especially when after two years, surely their real lives had at least somewhat fallen apart by then. So I wanna dig a little more into this in this fic, since it's quite prominent in Karma.
> 
> Oh yeah, and everyone from SAO knows who Karma and Kirito are and what they did in the end, but outside of the people working on the SAO case, people who weren't players generally don't know. So Megu doesn't know, and neither do Karma's parents. Even if they were aware of what went down, they wouldn't associate the name 'Karma' with Natsuki.
> 
> Also, I adore the song 'Love' by Nathan Wagner. It's so raw :) Actually, I just really love all of his songs. I'm gonna use a ton of them in this story for the song lyrics, so I'll probably say this 7982356 more times, but please listen to them, they're so good :D
> 
> Guess what? I'm bringing someone back next chapter...and it's gonna be Super Fun for Karma :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I lied. Kinda. Anyways, here's the new chapter :D

_here’s to the ones that we got; cheers to the wish you were here but you’re not_ \- Memories (Maroon 5)

~~~

_“So then I tell this kid, okay, first of a—wait, Karma’s here!”_

A grin splits Karma’s face ear to ear even as she winces at the chorus of her name that nearly blows out her eardrums. “Wow, okay, pipe down before you get kicked out, sheesh.”

The big Zoom screen keeps switching back and forth as the others talk over one another in excitement, and something in her heart swells with warmth as their faces flicker back and forth, their familiar voices creating an indiscernible but comforting babbling background noise. Luckily, she had the forethought to wear earbuds, so at least she won’t get kicked out of the cafe because they’re screaming at the top of their lungs.

_“When did you get here?”_ Kili demands, his unruly curls flopping into his young face like always, and she laughs.

“Just a minute ago,” she admits. “I wanted to see how long it took you guys to notice. So how is everyone?” she asks eagerly, pulling up the participants list, feeling as though fireworks are popping warmly in her chest; for the first time since waking up, she feels like she’s coming home. “It feels like forever. Who else is here?”

_“We’re just waiting on Uzala,”_ Sanza explains, stirring his drink with his straw.

_“As per usual,”_ Segro snickers from across the table with his own drink. He, Sanza, Fultz, and Muldar all live in the Tokyo area, and the Zoom call had been their idea. Although the rest of them can’t meet in person, Karma is already infinitely glad for this. She’s been in contact with all of them individually, and they have a group chat called ‘Knights of the Coffee Oath’ (which is actually what Uzala only half jokingly petitioned for the actual guild to be called at first—turns out that it would’ve been extremely accurate), but seeing all of their faces all at once is something she treasures.

_“What’s that you got there, Karma?”_ Fultz asks, gesturing at his own drink.

“It’s just coffee. I’m still nineteen, remember.”

Suddenly, a new face pops into the panels at the top. _“Boring! Come on, you can totally pass for drinking age.”_

She scowls playfully at Uzala’s beaming face; it’s still a little jarring seeing him with plain brown hair instead of bright blue.

“You saying I look old?” she demands over the chorus of the rest of them greeting their affectionately dubbed village idiot.

_“I wasn’t—I didn’t meant it like that! Please don’t hurt me.”_

Karma can’t help but laugh. “We’re on literally opposite sides of the country,” she reminds him, and her good mood falters briefly as she stares at her dark reflection in her drink, sitting alone in the corner of the cafe.

_“And god knows you’d find a way anyways,”_ Uzala grumbles. No one refutes that statement, and their laughter peters out into comfortable silence until he clears his throat. _“So, Karma, how’re you doing?”_

He sounds extremely awkward. She tilts her head as no one else responds. “I’m doing alright,” she says slowly, not really sure what he’s getting at. “What about you guys?”

The quartet at the bar exchange glances; the others not in person look awkward, until Uzala, looking a little more serious than usual, says gently, if still awkwardly, _“Y’know. I mean...I know it wasn’t the ending we were expecting.”_

Oh. That. Right...In the moment, she’d forgotten that they were all there, watching them rip and tear each other and themselves apart.

“Yeah…” She trails off, scratching the back of her neck, feeling suddenly numb inside. “I mean...yeah…” A hoarse little chuckle escapes her as she shrugs, at a loss (as if that’s anything new). “Y’know. ‘S okay.” Her voice is more shaky breath than substance, and she can hear it herself.

It’s not that she wants to hide it from them. If anything, they are the ones she should trust most to share her grief with. They are the ones who can ask her how she’s doing, and whom she would at least _try_ to be honest with, because they lived through it with her, they know what they’re talking about, even if they never felt it like she did.

Still, she can try, but it’s so, so hard to do anything but hide anymore.

“Are you guys holding up?” she asks instead, clearing her throat, where there’s a lump of something that doesn’t feel like anything, just...empty. “It’s hard on all of us.”

A low chorus of mumbles and a ripple of shrugs and so-so head nods goes around the Zoom, and she sighs, remembering that as close as they all are, she’s still talking to a half dozen or so guys who are notoriously awkward with feelings.

_“I wish we could have a group hug,”_ Uzala says quietly, looking so put-out about it, and she summons a grin she can’t feel.

“That would be nice,” she admits lightly, and that’s about as far as she can force herself to go, and he frowns.

_“Are you sure you’re doing okay? You always seem really tired all the time,”_ he adds, and she feels half relieved and validated that he noticed, and half annoyed at herself for it.

“Yeah, I mean…” She scratches her head. “Readjusting to the real world isn’t easy, but it could be a lot worse.”

She feels guilty for even saying it; she has no right to complain to them when she really could have it much worse. And they do have it worse than her; they have—or had—actual lives before SAO. Sanza was some kind of teacher, Fultz worked as an engineer, Muldar owned some kind of business that he’d been running since leaving college, Segro worked in hospitality, Uzala had a job as a bartender (which none of them were surprised to discover), and Kili was in college, which is probably a dumpster fire right now for him. She doesn’t know all the details, but she does know that everything was turned upside down for them once when they were trapped in the game, and then again when they were released from it.

They had lives and goals and aspirations that got put on hold or completely derailed in the last two years. What was she living for before SAO anyways?

They don’t look convinced, and she sighs, trying to force some determination to match her words. “Look, I—I got another chance at life, and I’m gonna have a go at it. Honest.”

_“We know,”_ Muldar finally says with a brief flicker of a smile. _“You were always a trooper. Never did anything half-assed.”_

_“We’re here for you,”_ Kili agrees, his young-looking face all sincerity. _“We’re all here for each other, always, right?”_

A soft murmur of assent goes up, a far cry from their raucous exuberance earlier, and Karma’s heart beats a little stronger as she tries to forget that once, _his_ voice would’ve been among theirs too.

Uzala clears his throat and beams at the camera.

_“Anyways, you guys wanna see my puppy?”_

As one, they all groan in exasperation, but their protests fall on deaf ears as Uzala whistles. _“Here, boy! I got some friends here who wanna see you-”_

_“You’ve literally sent us an entire album of pictures on the group chat,”_ Muldar says in exasperation, _“we really don’t need-”_

_“Don’t be silly!”_ Uzala’s disembodied voice exclaims cheerfully as he moves off screen, quickly devolving into baby talk. _“C’mere, boy! Who’s a good boy? There’s a good boy-”_

A wriggling mass of golden fur fills the screen for a second before Uzala readjusts the camera, grinning with his golden retriever puppy in his lap. _“Isn’t he adorable?!”_

Karma rolls her eyes so hard they might just roll out of her skull, but there’s something indescribably lovable about seeing Uzala so ridiculously happy about his dog. Save for earlier, everything about this half-virtual meet-up makes her heart feel lighter. Everyone looks good, if a little gaunt and tired. There’s light in their eyes.

They talk about anything. If she doesn’t think too hard about it, it almost feels like Aincrad again. They try to use their real names for all of two minutes before deciding it’s too much trouble and to simply use their handles. Karma doesn’t hesitate to jump right in when she wants to; they’ve always listened to her, as subordinates, as comrades, as friends and family. And talking with them is easy, in a comfortable, unchallenging way. They all know enough about each other that they can certainly talk for hours and hours without fumbling for things to talk about, and they know enough to know what topics to stay away from.

In a nonverbal agreement, none of them really bring up what happened in the boss chamber on Floor 75 again.

“Hey,” she says, suddenly curious, “what’s the best part about SAO being over?”

The call lapses into a rare moment of thoughtful silence. To no one’s surprise, Uzala breaks it first.

_“I get to see my puppy again!”_

At the following bombardment of half-hearted exasperation, he laughs, absently fondling his puppy’s ears affectionately. _“Okay, okay, okay...I guess it’s nice to be able to step outside the city without being afraid of being mauled by monsters,”_ he says with a grin, and Karma tries to laugh, she really does.

It’s just that...she liked it. Well, she despised it in the sense that it put them all in danger when they walked out of a safe zone, but she _liked_ it in the sense that when it was just her, when it was only her life in peril and no one else’s, it was nothing but _thrilling_ to risk it all. The stakes were so high, but that just meant that her actions could mean _something_.

And even though she knew that it wasn’t what really made the difference at the end of the day, it gave her a strength that could be quantified in numbers and experience points. It was reassuring; all illusions are.

_(This world is too real, that’s all)_

She stirs when Uzala adds, in a sort of petulant tone, _“I fell down the stairs the other day, though...that hurt.”_

Karma gives a little laugh with no substance to it, and Muldar says sarcastically, “Of course it did. Can’t exactly go around tripping over your own two left feet anymore and not expect it to hurt.”

_“But it’s really annoying,”_ he whines, like a little kid complaining about some inane little thing. _“I forgot how much I hate splinters, and paper cuts, and I forgot you can’t touch coffee mugs right after you pour steaming hot coffee into it, and that you also can’t drink coffee right after it’s made without burning your tongue.”_ He lets out a heavy sigh to punctuate his complaints.

“Oof, I do that too,” Karma says sympathetically to distract herself. “Pain. What a nuisance, am I right?”

_“Exactly!”_

The night whirls on. Everyone (except Karma) gets a little tipsy, between rounds of games and hours of talking. The atmosphere is like an amber warm bubble of familiarity. She’s got her family all around her; it feels good.

_“I was thinking of visiting Godfree’s family soon.”_

All attention is directed to Uzala’s screen in silence, and Karma slowly breathes in.

“Were you,” she sighs, grief permeating that easy atmosphere at the mention of someone else they left behind there in that floating steel castle.

_“It’s a bit of a hike, but he lives—lived here up north too,”_ he explains, clearing his throat bracingly, _“so I can make the trip.”_

“Sounds good,” Karma says, but she hears her own voice like it’s someone else speaking.

_“Let us know when you’re going,”_ Kili chimes in, sounding more subdued than usual.

_“Yeah, for sure.”_

Karma wonders how silence can sound so different sometimes. It’s different when she’s stealthily making her way through a dead silent dungeon, every nerve drawn taut while waiting for something or someone hostile to come at her. It’s different when she’s on the verge of falling asleep in some random, rickety inn room, thoughts buzzing, anxieties gnawing.

It’s different when she’s with friends, during a sleepy lull in the conversation, when they’re not really searching for anything to talk about, just content with the presence of family.

It’s different when they’re mourning.

_“I’m really glad we did this,”_ Uzala says aloud, words more than a little slurred at this point. It’s past midnight, and Karma has returned to her apartment already. _“I missed all your pretty faces.”_

Sanza snorts quietly. _“Love you too, buddy.”_

Karma hums in accordance, not tipsy but more than a little sleepy despite the three cups of coffee she’s had tonight. Tonight has been more than special.

This is family. This is home.

But the more complete their circle is, the more glaring the gaps are.

When Sanza finally closes the Zoom call at two in the morning, Karma pulls out her earbuds and leans back in bed and stretches with a quiet groan, exhausted, her mind full of new memories and heart empty from remembering the old ones.

Godfree should’ve been there, boasting that he could totally drink them all under the table and utterly failing when challenged to do so. He should’ve been there, telling the absolute worst dad jokes and making them all threaten to hit that red ‘leave meeting’ button (but not quite). He should’ve been there, laughing his booming laugh with the rest of them; he deserved to keep laughing and living.

Asuna should’ve been there, making the occasional witty remark that would completely rip apart the guys with a cool smirk on her face and in her copper eyes. She should’ve been there, carrying their two collective brain cells and putting her foot down with a tone that no one dared to disobey when the others were about to do something catastrophically stupid. She should’ve been there, grinning as they happily made fools of themselves; she deserves to be free.

Karma would trade her life for either one of theirs in an instant _(but then she wonders how much of that is truly selfless)._

And as Karma listened and danced along to the others singing terrible karaoke, as she muffled her cackling, tears streaming down her face, while watching everyone’s faces grow more and more red with every drink they downed, as she joined them in playing shiritori and online pictionary and a dozen other silly games over the internet, every passing second was just another that she feels his absence more and more strongly where he should’ve _shouldn’t have_ been.

_Where his dry humor and soft chuckles and broad shoulders and warm hands and the place against his side just for her and the quiet, genuine_ (or so she thought) _smile that he wore sparingly but just for her-_

Did it mean _anything?_

- _should’ve been._

“What’s wrong with me?” she wonders out loud, the words dissipating unheard in the dark, and before she realizes, she has her NerveGear in her gloved hands, staring blankly at her barely visible reflection in the dark, translucent material.

Shouldn’t she be happy with what she has? Shouldn’t she be content with the friends and family that are alive and here and willnever betray her _(at least, she thinks so)_?

With a long breath, she draws a hand back through loose strands of hair; someone empty stares back at her in the visor’s reflection.

_“It’s human nature to want more than we can ever have.”_

He shouldn’t have been there. He didn’t deserve to be there. It’s good that he wasn’t there. It’s good that he’s gone. They’re better off without him. They should be better off. She should be better off

_but she sure as hell doesn’t feel like it._

And Karma _knows_ that things should be better, _knows_ that she’s better off without someone who didn’t want her enough to care, but the part of her that mourns the man they call a villain doesn’t understand why he had to go.

~~~

_yesterday’s gone and tomorrow never comes, still I’m living like they’re all that I got_ \- Into the Infinite (Nathan Wagner)

_I don’t wanna be an island; I just wanna feel alive and get to see your face again_ \- Echo (Jason Walker)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I said I was going to bring back an old character at the end of last chapter...and I guess the KoB counts, kind of. But I was editing, and writing, and before I knew it, I'd accidentally written like an extra thousand words or so (y'know, As One Does) and it got long enough that I could split it in half and have two coherent chapters...And if it was just the fact that it was longer than the first chapter, which I already thought was going to be the second longest chapter in this thing (which, now that I think about my tendencies, probably won't be true anyways), I probably would've kept it, but I actually found a good stopping point. The two halves didn't quite match up anyways, so I just decided to split it.
> 
> (Also, another chapter means an extra three song recommendations I can throw at you guys :D)
> 
> Lmao speaking of stopping points, I'm looking through my rough drafts and there is a shockingly (well not really) low number of chapters with an ending that isn't blatantly depressing :P
> 
> The Zoom hangout was quite reminiscent of current conditions, huh? XD I debated on having one of the KoB be skeptical of/against Karma and wondering if she was with Kayaba the whole time (like an idiot), but then I decided maybe that's a bit much, and out of character for them XD But I'll, uh, definitely be keeping that idea in mind for the future ;D
> 
> So the character I was talking about last chapter didn't appear here. No, it wasn't Uzala, or any of the KoB. You can decide what that means ;) But I promise the character will be in the next chapter! It's gonna be great!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The long awaited (not really) mystery character is here! Are you excited? I know I am :D

_I try to break these binds, but all these ghosts come with their knives_ \- Trauma (Nathan Wagner)

~~~

“Kelp tea and black coffee, please.”

Karma rolls her eyes in amusement when Megu once again throws her a mild stink-eye at the mention of the black coffee. She pretends the fact that Karma’s tastes have changed so drastically is some kind of minor personal betrayal.

They go to pay, and Karma is left staring at a confused-looking cashier before she realizes that no, a holographic window won’t pop up for her to pay. Hurriedly, she swipes down with two fingers to access her inv-

Nope, not that either. Sighing at herself, she digs out her wallet to pay.

“You’re so weird,” Megu sighs, half amused, half confused as they sit down. “Why do you keep doing that?”

Karma gives her a bemused look. “Why do you think?”

Megu blinks, and comprehension dawns. “Oh. Ah, um, I-I didn’t mean-”

“Good grief,” Karma snickers, leaning back in her chair, “if you want to ask, just ask. I’m not going to break down crying, y’know.”

The words come out a little sharper than she intends, and she clears her throat, taking a sip of coffee awkwardly. Luckily, Megu looks more thoughtful than offended, and with her, what you see is what you get. She never says anything she doesn’t mean (and when she tries, it’s hilariously easy to tell) and wears her heart on her sleeve. With a tendency to speak her mind as she felt like it, Megu has always made more enemies than friends at first, unwittingly or not, but Karma thinks it just makes being her friend easier.

“So...why do you keep doing that thing?” she finally asks, mimicking the swiping motion.

“That’s how you access your inventory, your menu, that sort of thing.”

Megu nods, cupping her hands around her tea. “Did you fight at all?”

Resisting the urge to roll her eyes again, Karma raises her cup to her lips. “Here and there.” Honestly, she can’t recall a single day when she didn’t draw her sword at least once.

Megu leans in slightly, looking like she was trying not to be fascinated (and also failing horribly at it). “What was it like?”

Karma closes her eyes and exhales, dark ripples fleeing on the surface of her drink.

It’s the sensation of her body moving under the system, light painting the air like the tail of a shooting star following her blade. It’s the breathless feeling of moving under her own power like she never could in real life, knowing the potential for destruction she wields in her own two hands.

It’s the sobering realization of being so keenly aware of how many lives weigh down her blade. It’s the horror at the ease with which steel cuts through virtual muscle and bone when it’s not just an AI that ceases to exist. It’s the guilt of knowing _she did that._

It’s the camaraderie of fighting alongside someone else, the satisfaction of working together like a well-oiled machine, like something even smoother than a machine. It’s the security of knowing her back is watched, and the strength that comes with knowing that someone trusts her to watch theirs. It’s the confidence, no matter how brazen or foolish or out of place it might be at times, that stems from fighting to protect.

“It’s exhilarating,” she says, and it’s something she could never truly put into words, in no small part because she knows she’ll never feel any of it again the way she did before.

“Did you make friends in there?”

Karma takes a sip of coffee. It tastes different from the kind back home.

“The best friends in the world,” she admits.

And the best _family_ in the world.

At Megu’s peeved expression, she adds hastily, “Present company excluded.”

Megu leans back, crossing her legs. “Hmph,” she mutters into her tea, but Karma knows she’s not actually mad. “...So have you thought about what you’re going to do about school?”

Karma goes into a coughing fit as her coffee goes down the wrong pipe. “S-school? Who do you think I am? You?”

“Well, no one said you had to go back immediately,” Megu says placatingly, propping her face up on the heel of her hand. “I’m just saying, you’re an adult now. You should be in college by now. Even two years ago, you were dragging your heels on what you wanted to do after high school.”

Karma sighs, watching the streets outside the window but not really seeing. “Yeah, I dunno.”

“I can help tutor you,” Megu offers with a grin. “I tutor plenty of people at uni already, so I could totally use some extra practice dealing with the lazy ones,” she teases, leaning over to flick Karma in the forehead.

Karma catches her hand and lightly pushes it away, leaning back with an amused ‘tch’. “Maybe I’ll take you up on that.”

She probably won’t. She literally does not have the capacity to care about what comes next. How can she, when she barely has the capacity to care about now?

Besides, there’s the matter of what she did in Aincrad. Regardless of her reasons, there will _always_ be that matter. That body count, the little ‘plus’ symbol tacked on at the end because she doesn’t even know the exact number, will follow her until she dies, throughout her life and inside of her head. What future can she reasonably hope for when everyone will think—and, to be perfectly honest, rightfully assume—that there is something wrong with her?

~~~

“Hello, how may I help you today?”

Customer service is pretty easy for Karma. Putting on a polite mask in front of strangers isn’t so bad (not when she’s been getting plenty of practice at her so-called therapy). And working in a coffee shop is pretty much as close to a dream come true as it can get right now. The first few days took getting used to, especially since they kind of had to throw her into the deep end with a staff shortage, but she landed on her feet. The owner didn’t even really care that she was a former SAO player and hired her anyway.

Learning all the drink recipes was hard, but she’s not the only one working at the counter, which helps. And some patrons come here often, so she has to learn their regular orders, but that’s just rote memorization.

When she told Megu, Megu had the most scandalized expression on her face.

“You have befouled the good name of tea-drinkers the world over,” she said, in such a shocked tone that Karma spit out her coffee laughing.

She didn’t really need a job, to be honest. She didn’t _need_ the money, and her parents would’ve given it to her if she did need it for something. But it felt strange to not have her own money. It’s not like she’s been eying a pretty accessory or anything, even though that’s what her parents think (she lets them; it’s easier than explaining), but in Aincrad, she always earned her own way. The guild provided her money if she really needed it, but she rarely did. She killed enough monsters (and players) to keep herself afloat in terms of col.

Being able to earn her own money in the real world wasn’t _necessary_ , but not being able to made her feel too dependent. Plus, she gets cheap coffee here, and the people are nice enough.

“Have a nice day,” she says, handing off a drink to a customer with a polite smile and turning as the next one walks through the door. “Hi, how can I h-”

The words stick in her throat as her hand flies to her pocket, where her knife is under the apron. In a split second, she takes everything in—the other barista left to go to the bathroom, there are no customers waiting, and only a few at the tables. The back exit is through the door behind her, all the way down and to the right; if it comes down to it, she can run for it before too much collateral damage is done-

Run?

_Since when did she become the prey?_

Kotori approaches the counter with a languid spring in her step. Her hair has been cut short to her shoulders, but her bubbly smile and the crooked part in her hair, although it’s not clover green anymore, are unmistakable.

Her hand slips into her pocket, and Karma has her knife blade half-unfolded inside her pocket when Kotori slides some money onto the counter, the coins dragging across the surface with a metallic scrape. Karma’s nails dig into the grip of her weapon.

“I’ll have a latte, please,” she chirps, all sunshine and smiles.

For a moment, Karma wonders if Kotori possibly, against all odds, somehow does not remember or does not recognize her-

In a flash, she’s leaning on the counter on her elbows, smiling right up in Karma’s face. “How are you, by the way, Natsuki-chan? Personally, I think it’s great to finally be out of that dark cell you threw me in. Ugh, physical therapy is a pain, though, especially since I won’t even be able to go back to the studio for a while-”

“You’ve been watching me,” she interrupts lowly, relieved to know what’s had her so paranoid lately, and also dreading what’s to come even more now.

Kotoro props up her face on her hand, blinking up at Karma. “You noticed.”

“I didn’t survive hunting criminals for almost two years by not being observant,” she rasps, mechanically sweeping the money up.

Karma enters her order and counts up the money, her other senses blaring on high alert while her sight is preoccupied for any warning of hostile action. Kotori sighs airily.

“Yeah, they’re keeping an eye on me and Haruhi,” she complains, as if this is but a minor inconvenience, and Karma flinches at the mention of another former friend. “But it’s not that hard to get away.” She straightens up, and Karma has to consciously tell herself to not take a step back. “I told you we’d finish this in the real world, didn’t I, Natsuki-chan?”

That name still grates on her in all the worst ways. Karma’s heart is pounding like a war drum in her chest to a rhythm of _fight flight fight flight fight flight-_

“Then do it,” she challenges, moving to start that latte. “I’m always armed, and I bet your muscle memory isn’t so good after a year and a half of prison.”

Kotori’s eyes narrow, her smile unwavering. “Oh, no, I think I’ll wait. Revenge is a dish best served cold, don’t you know?”

When it’s done, Karma sets down the latte a bit harder than she intended to, ignoring the pain flashing through her hand when a bit of the hot drink splashes out.

“You don’t have to do this,” she says quietly. “I’m a hero of SAO, remember?” It’s a title she hates, for many reasons, but if it can be useful, she’ll take it.

“Oh, of course I remember. I’ve heard the rumors,” Kotori hisses, bristling with the same unhinged fury that Karma saw when she killed Rue. “You’re all alone, got no one there for you. Me and Haruhi, we’re a team, and you’re going to get what you deserve for killing Rie.”

“I’ve always worked alone,” Karma growls, lowering her hands below the counter so she won’t see them trembling; every instinct screams at her to eliminate this threat before it eliminates her. “I took six of you down myself.” But what can she do, when she cannot flee nor afford to fight?

Kotori leans in, grinning a gap-toothed grin from that time she lost a tooth on the tumbling floor; Karma still remembers.

“That was in the game. This is real life,” she whispers, as if she has to remind Karma of that. “No weapons, no stats, no items, no magic heal crystals. You’re no one here, and you’ve got nothing; _you are nothing.”_

Suddenly, the back door opens, and Karma jumps before she can stop herself.

But it’s just the other barista. “I’m back! Thanks for covering for me.”

Kotori jumps into action before Karma can stop her.

“Heya, thanks for taking care of my friend here!” she exclaims with a sunny grin, reaching across the counter to thump Karma on the shoulder maybe a little harder than necessary. “I was just coming to check on how she’s doing and all. It’s great to see that she found such a great place with great people to work at!”

“Oh, that’s okay,” Karma’s coworker says, smiling; she’s nice, but gullible, but Karma can’t think of what to say to make Kotori shut up and leave.

“See, we haven’t seen each other since before the whole SAO thing, and when I heard Natsuki-chan was working at my favorite coffee shop, I just had to stop by and say hi. I’ll get out of your hair now!”

With a cheery smile, she grabs her latte, wiggles her fingers in a wave, and skips out the door.

~~~

Karma scans the street warily as she slips out of the coffee shop. At this hour, the number of people is staring to dwindle, and the streetlights have turned on. Her knife is tucked into the large pocket on the front of her hoodie, her clammy grip tight on the handle, ready to draw in an instant.

She contemplates telling the government official she talked to first. But they would probably just tell her that Kotori is being kept under careful supervision, like all orange and red players, and that Karma has nothing to worry about, and then they’ll write it off as her being paranoid because they think she’s insane.

And who else could she tell? Kirito can’t do anything from where he’s at, nor can any of her friends from SAO; none of them even live in Kyushu. And she’s definitely not telling Megu or her parents that one of her former close friends is out for blood—hers, specifically.

“She was wrong,” she mutters as she hurries down the street, walking briskly with an air of purpose, she tells herself, _not_ fear.

She looks down at her other hand not clutching her knife and curls it into a fist, the red fabric bunching and stretching, so she doesn’t have to watch her hand tremble as much.

“I am not nothing,” she tells herself in a whisper, but the way her feet involuntarily pick up the speed like a skittish rat says otherwise.

When she arrives back at her apartment, she consciously locks the door behind her and wiggles the doorknob to make sure. Shooting off a perfunctory greeting to her parents, she goes to shower, still with one hand in her pocket on her knife.

Kotori knows where she lives. She always has. They did use to hang out outside of school and the gymnastics studio. That includes Haruhi too. Karma’s not sure what Haruhi feels about all of this, but Kotori said that she and Haruhi are a team, which makes Karma think that when they finally decide to make their move, they’ll do it together. Karma highly doubts other girls at the studio will be involved—they weren’t in SAO, because if they were, they probably would’ve been with Kotori and Haruhi. The thought doesn’t comfort her much, though.

She gets dressed at top speed, feeling a moment of panic when her head gets a bit stuck in the darkness of her hoodie. With a gasp, she finally pulls it down and has one hand back on her knife before she realizes how absolutely ridiculous she is.

“Relax,” she whispers to her foggy reflection in the mirror. “She can’t get to you here. Don’t...don’t be stupid. They probably don’t remember how to fight properly like you. Y-you have nothing to be scared of.”

But in SAO, there were safe zones, codes built in to make locked doors inaccessible, period.

But here, in the real world?

Nowhere is truly safe anymore.

The steam in the bathroom gets even thicker, but then something wet and warm rolls down her cheek, and she realizes it’s not the steam blurring her vision further.

“I wanna go home,” she whispers.

After staying up past midnight, she finally goes to sleep (and even using the word ‘sleep’ is being generous) with her NerveGear tucked up against her chest and a knife close to hand. One of those objects makes her feel slightly better about closing her eyes, and she’s almost ashamed that she knows exactly which one it is.

~~~

_I can’t be sober, I cannot sleep; you’ve got your peace now, but what about me?_ \- You Said You’d Grow Old With Me (Michael Schulte)

_you barely glance back at the damage in your wake; you may never care that I’m the one you could’ve saved_ \- Nothing Left (Beth Crowley)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lmao you guys thought I was bringing another friend back when I mentioned it in chapter 2 ;P
> 
> (Sorry not sorry)
> 
> Remember that minor orange player OC from half of chapter 6 in Retribution? Yeah, this is her. :) (Man, it feels like I posted that chapter so long ago XD)
> 
> (If you don't remember, Kotori was a real life friend of Karma's who formed an orange guild with other real life friends, who Karma had drifted away from a bit before SAO started. Karma was tasked with hunting them down, and she ended up having to kill one of Kotori's real friends before locking the rest of them up. Haruhi, who was mentioned briefly, is another one of Kotori's friends and Karma's former friends who survived and was part of the orange guild. Kotori swore that they would finish this in the real world...so here they are now.)
> 
> I don't actually really have an explanation for why she decided to help kill people in SAO in the first place, or why she doesn't feel any remorse even now in the real world when she knows that the people she helped kill won't be coming back. *shrug* She's just meant to be a catalyst, so I don't really feel like digging into her head.
> 
> And Karma clearly doesn't have enough problems right now, so I threw another one at her to make everything worse! Let's see how this one goes :D


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a slippery slope to ruin :)

_your heart is full of broken dreams, just a fading memory; everything’s gone, but the pain carries on -_ Not Alone (Red)

~~~

“...Natsuki. Are you even hearing me?”

Karma jumps when Megu snaps her fingers in front of her face, catching her drink just in time before it spilled all over her.

“Jeez, could you not?” she huffs, a bit more sharply than she intended to. “Of course I hear you. You were talking about your roommate again, how she likes a different guy in her friend group now?”

Megu doesn’t look impressed. “So you heard me, but you’re obviously not listening,” she snipes, poking Karma’s forehead.

She bats her hand away, struggling to contain a scowl. “Same thing.”

Megu slurps at her tea. “Did something happen? You seem on edge these days.”

Karma lifts her coffee to her mouth. She’s always on edge. If Megu noticed, she must really be slipping.

“I’m fine. Just haven’t been sleeping that well,” she says dismissively.

That much is true, at least, even from before Kotori reappeared. She hasn’t gotten a single night’s worth of decent sleep since waking up from Aincrad. Between purposefully staying up late with coffee (which isn’t exactly smart, but she can never bring herself to care in those moments), waking up in the middle of the night from the things she sees in her sleep, or lately being unable to fall asleep because she’s irrationally worried she’ll never wake up in the morning, she hasn’t exactly been well-rested. Still, she’s used to functioning on little sleep anyways, so she’s still keeping up with her job well enough.

She thinks the dreams might be the worst. Despite two years of them, she never quite got used to it. After all, she’s used to staying up late with coffee, and she’s certainly used to going to sleep knowing people are out to get her.

But her subconscious always, _always_ finds ways to mix it up on her, just when she wakes up thinking she’s seen it all—murdering people, getting murdered by people who she’s murdered, watching people she cares about die horrifically.

And more than all the others, she hates the newest one that has come to call. There’s no blood, no screaming, no steel except in blank dry eyes and a crumbling castle; again and again, she stands in the middle of the sky and watches two lives turn to dust before her eyes in a way that hurts infinitely more than the rest.

“Maybe the people at the rehab center can help you. Get you some sleep pills or something.”

Karma just rolls her eyes and changes the subject. No. She has to be perfect for them. Can’t show any signs of slipping. None. And if her mind doesn’t want to sleep, she won’t make her body do it. She doesn’t need them fighting, not at a time like this; she needs all the allies she can get.

A time like this…

When is it going to be over? Everyone’s going back to normal, slowly, but they’re moving forward, and she’s just...stuck here.

She knows many people are still grieving for ones they left behind in the game, both people who were SAO players and people who weren’t. The ones who were mourned those they couldn’t protect. The ones who weren’t knew now, with a chilling finality, that this wasn’t a trick, a two year long hoax. SAO is over, and the family they lost is never coming back.

For two years, she’s been wondering, _how many are mourning the lives she took?_

Everything is real, and it hurts.

But she’s pretty sure no one but her wants to actually _go back._ Because that’s insane, right? That’s stupid. She has her friends and her family back, she even has her beloved guild members to lean on, except it’s _pointless_ without the trust in other people she can’t reclaim.

Asuna still isn’t awake, and she _misses_ her little sister. She thought it would be one of the ironclad certainties of coming back to this place, that she would have Asuna, who would surely understand—not fully, but better than anyone else could.

(Really, though, she should know better than to expect certainties to last.)

Megu is great. Megu has barely changed at all from when SAO began, and that’s comforting in its own way, and jarring in another. Karma has changed so much that Megu being just about the exact same as she was before is stability; at the same time, she just doesn’t understand anything.

Megu laughs at the idea that Karma could’ve been on the front lines, and that’s understandable, because Karma would’ve laughed too before SAO. Megu thinks Karma must be happy to be out of that game—again, understandable; most people are. Megu wants Karma to move forward and start thinking about the future, but she just can’t.

Megu thinks she still knows Karma, but she _doesn’t;_ she still knows Akane Natsuki, and that’s just not who Karma is anymore. And it hurts, not having someone who can read her like an open book and who will keep her secrets, who will take her tears and her shattered glass shards of pain and keep them somewhere safe.

It hurts, not being able to think to herself, _If I can get through this, if I can make it home to him, then everything will be okay._

SAO was a world painted in shades of gray (fitting for a steel castle), full of monsters, and she loved the worst one of them all. She was blissfully ignorant, and it was _wonderful._

_I want to go home._

~~~

“-guy who got into the fight with the group chat, remember him?”

“Mmm.”

“So he’s back now, apparently, and I don’t even know what the heck is-”

Karma cracks her neck loudly, yawning. The stars are barely visible tonight. “Don’t look now, but someone’s following us—I _said,_ don’t look.”

Megu hurriedly stays facing forward at Karma’s biting tone. All the flippant, gossipy humor is gone from her voice, now hushed. “What do you-”

“It’s fine. Just a would-be mugger.” From the quick glimpses she caught, whoever it is is too bulky and tall to be Kotori or Haruhi. They don’t tend to get much nighttime crime around these parts, but it happens.

“We’re still fifteen minutes from home,” Megu hisses, her grip on her purse so tight that Karma can hear the material creaking from here. “I’ll call-”

“No. If you call the police, he’ll be long gone by the time they get here.”

“Well, that’s the point, idiot!” Megu already has her phone out of her bag when Karma clamps her hand over her wrist tightly. “Ow! Wh-what are you doing?!”

“I’ve got enough people already breathing down my neck; I don’t need the police doing it too,” she says, her tone perfectly conversational. They’ll just think she’s seeing things and being paranoid—which she is, but that’s not the point. “Come on. We’ll take a shortcut home.”

Ignoring Megu’s increasingly high-pitched protests, Karma leads the way down a dimly lit side street, sidestepping some trash bags at a leisurely pace; she doesn’t drag Megu with her, but the other girl follows anyway, too scared to be left alone, and squeaks like a mouse when the light pops and flickers overhead. Adrenaline begins to thrum in her veins again, and she breathes in deep, her pulse starting to drown out Megu’s voice (and the one in her head) telling her how bad of an idea this is.

When she breathes out, it’s like all of her insecurities go with it.

“I’m telling you, this is just looking to get in trouble!” Megu hisses, working herself up in a panic. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but-”

Karma wheels around, glaring in the direction they came from. “Yeah, well, as much fun as listening to your roommate’s drama is, it’s not my cup of tea. Or coffee.”

Shadows stretch long as the man who’s been following them steps into view, and Megu sucks in a sharp, terrified breath. He does cut an intimidating figure, but all that matters is that he doesn’t look light on his feet.

Though the way he handles that knife is interesting. “You were in SAO.”

His lip curls. “So I was,” he rasps; she can smell cigarettes on him from here. “And you’d better believe I still know how to use this.”

He twirls his knife briefly, and Megu lets out a frightened bleat; meanwhile, Karma listens carefully for footsteps from their back. The adrenaline sharpens all of her senses and fine tunes them, drowning out anything unnecessary. With a sweep of her gaze, she takes in their surroundings; there’s a trash can next to her with a lid she can use as a shield, a dumpster for a possible height advantage, a broken sake bottle that she can easily pick up without worrying about the glass cutting her gloved fingers-

“Megu, watch our backs,” she orders brusquely. “Just in case he’s got friends.”

She twitches in irritation when Megu protests, vocally. Her guildmates would’ve _never;_ they would’ve trusted her _-_

“Natsuki, shut up and just give him what he wants!” Megu snaps, her voice cracking with fear; she can hear her unzipping her purse already.

But then again, she admits to herself, she would’ve never gone looking for a fight with her guildmates in tow when they trusted her to keep them safe. After all, Megu has no such trust in her.

“He won’t have a gun,” she says dismissively. “They’re restricted enough as it is, and no way would anyone let a former SAO player have one. Tell me-” She directs this at their aggressor. “-were you in an orange guild? Perhaps Laughing Coffin?”

His bloodshot eyes widen, his knife lowering ever so slightly; if Karma wanted to, she’d have made her move at that instant.

“You were in the game too, weren’t you?” he asks hoarsely.

“Yup. Worked for the clearers.”

He flinches at that, mouth working furiously. “You’re bluffing,” he snaps, his grip on his weapon far too tight. “Even if you were, I bet you were just a crafter or something. Now listen to your friend and-”

The words stop coming out of his mouth. Her twin braids sway as Karma tilts her head with a slow blink, pasting on an innocent face, doe eyes and all, and greedily soaks up the sweet, sweet realization dawning on his face. Inside her pocket, her finger runs over the flat of the smooth steel blade. She can’t draw it, not in front of Megu, but it’s a comforting, cold weight.

_See? I’m not nothing, I’m not no one. I’m_ not.

“You sure you still wanna go?” she asks softly, silently goading him on, _do it do it do it I wanna fight again do it!_

And all the blood drains right out of his face as he takes a step back, eyes so wide that she thinks they might pop out of his head, before he books it out of there at a dead run. His footsteps echo in the deserted alley as he disappears from sight.

Karma is almost disappointed, but in a more resigned way. Megu is still here, and anything can happen in a fight. With a short huff, she lets the tension go reluctantly, shoulders slumping as some part of her, a part of her that represents the freedom she hasn’t had since Aincrad, is locked away along with the adrenaline.

Being strong feels pointless without him.

“That dramatic enough for you?” she asks wryly, smirking at a shell-shocked, trembling Megu, pretending that it doesn’t hurt when Megu looks at her like this, like the people at the rehab center do, like the government officials asking thinly veiled questions do. “Come on, let’s get home. I don’t think you can take any more excitement for tonight.”

_They_ never had a problem with her strength. They valued it. They patted her on the back for it, praised her for it. And when her strength alone wasn’t enough, they had her back, lending her their own.

She wants her life back; this isn’t living.

~~~

Later that night, Karma is back on the rooftop, this time alternating between training with her knife and her wooden sword. The NerveGear sits by the stairs, the pale moonlight drawing silver swatches on the blue device.

When her vision is spinning and each breath stings her throat and lungs to draw and so much sweat is dripping into her eyes that she can’t see straight anymore, she collapses on the edge of the roof, leaning over it and letting her arms hang.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” she sighs; the asphalt is rough on her chin, so she folds her arms underneath her head. “Next time, I won’t drag her along...She thinks I’m crazy now. You think she’ll tattle on me?” Guilt pangs in her heart for her complete lack of faith. “No, she won’t...She would’ve done it by now if she was going to...and she doesn’t even know who I really am.” Her tone darkens. “She’d better not…”

A shiver claws its way up her spine at the implied _or else,_ and she feels absolutely disgusted with herself for a second-

She groans, flopping onto her back, rolling her head over the edge of the building. “That’s not what I meant! Ugh…Just when I started to forget how annoying you are…”

Karma throws her arms out, the cool air tickling her sweaty face. “I do feel kinda bad. I guess I did go looking for a fight.” And part of her is still disappointed she didn’t get one. “I guess I really shouldn’t have done that...She’ll never see me the same way again, even if she tries to act like it...Maybe it’s for the best. It’s about time she stopped being so blind.”

Tilting her head to look at the steel blue NerveGear, painted silver under the moon, she lets out a soft huff. “She thinks I’m still the same person, and I’m _not._ I don’t even know how she doesn’t see it. I guess she just doesn’t want to.”

She sits up, her back to the five story drop, and sighs, resentment warring with guilt. “I know I’m lucky to have her welcome me back so easily...but she _hasn’t_ changed,” she whispers, her voice breaking softly, “and she thinks I haven’t either.”

But the people that are her family are halfway across the country, some even further. Megu’s the most solid, tangible thing she’s got right now, right here, so what other choice does she have?

In a sudden burst of frustration, she chucks her knife at the floor; it bounces with an angry spark across the roof, grating to a stop some meters away.

“It’s all your fault,” she snaps at the motionless, soulless NerveGear. “The secrets won’t come out of me! I want to trust her, and it’s all your fault that I can’t!”

After two years of being constantly, keenly aware that anyone off the streets could be a threat, that anyone could stab her in the back if she leaned on them too much, she just started looking at every stranger as an enemy by default. Made things...easier, in a sense.

But she never intended for her own friends and family to fall into that category; at the same time, it feels like she doesn’t know them at all anymore. She can’t help but wonder how well she knew them in the first place.

Everything has been called into crippling doubt—if the one thing that was never supposed to happen _happened_ , then what else will fall apart, _who else will leave?_

She reaches out for the NerveGear, lovingly cradling it close, murmuring in a tone that sounds almost like affection, “It was always all your fault.”

A yawn escapes her as she folds her arms on top of the device and rests her cheek on them, as if she was in his office in the dead of night again instead of sitting on top of a roof, listening to papers rustling and soft breathing instead of cars and strange, faint voices, as if they weren’t separated by a distance she can’t begin to quantify.

“I know you’re out there somewhere,” she breathes, as if he can somehow hear her. “I’d know if you were gone.” It’s a strange feeling; she knows he’s not _gone,_ but at the same time, she knows that they do not exist in the same plane anymore.

Still, she speaks; if there’s the slightest chance he can hear her…

“Where are you? I wanna go home…”

~~~

Megu’s still leery of her, but she’s trying her best to act otherwise. Honestly, Karma’s really not sure how Megu hasn’t figured out who Akane Natsuki really is. The government tried their best to shut down the rumors a while ago, but they’re probably still floating around somewhere on the internet. Maybe Megu just doesn’t want to see it. That’s probably why her parents haven’t figured it out either; humans are good at being blind to things that challenge their beliefs, and Karma is no different.

“Looks like it’ll be a white Christmas this year!” Megu declares cheerfully, beaming up at the sky as white, powdery snow drifts down prettily (Aincrad was still prettier).

Christmas, huh...Her hand ghosts the spot above her chest, where something metal should be resting warm against her skin, and her mind wanders to snowball fights and frozen ponds and sledding on anything except for actual sleds and a gift and a hug given under pine trees. She remembers mountains and the northern lights, breaths fogging in little white clouds before them, so insignificant in the face of such beauty.

Her boots splash wetly in the gray, brownish slush, and she wrinkles her nose. The snow in Aincrad was always pristine white and good for making snowballs—another illusion, but a nice one nonetheless.

“Hey, you remember Hanada, right? You used to do gymnastics with her. Hanada Kotori?”

Karma freezes mid-step for all of a split second; out of nowhere, that crippling fear comes and seizes her lungs in its grip-

“What about her?” It takes all her willpower to sound normal.

“We ran into each other the other day,” she says with a shrug, tapping away on her phone; her nails go _click click_. “She just said hi. Told me to say hi to you too.”

Karma opens and closes her mouth several times. “Oh,” is all she can muster, faint and insubstantial.

“Yeah, she was in SAO too, did you know?”

Oh, god, what if she goes after Megu? A friend for a friend? Nausea threatens to pitch her lunch out onto the sidewalk.

“She said she was in a guild with her friend Haruhi, and this other girl named Rie, from your gymnastics studio.” Megu makes a sympathetic noise. “Rie didn’t make it out of the game, though.” Her tone darkens. “Some psychopath murdered h-”

“I have to get to my job,” Karma whispers, already breaking into a run. Someone honks as she dashes across the street, but she doesn’t hear it or Megu’s confused shout past the blood roaring in her ears.

Why wouldn’t Kotori tell Megu that it was her? Maybe she didn’t think Megu would believe her, which, in all honesty, she probably wouldn’t. Maybe she’s just holding it over Karma’s head, taunting her, waiting for her to snap-

She won’t, she _won’t,_ she _will not-_

Lungs burning for air, she stumbles to a stop at the corner, leaning against a streetlamp to regain her breath; the air is cold and stinging, and it’s hard to breathe.

“Hey, didn’t expect to see you here!”

Kotori grins as Karma’s hand flies to her pocket. “Stay away from my friend,” she demands lowly, rage bubbling in the pit of her lungs, and Kotori _click clicks_ her tongue.

“That’s rich, coming from you,” she sneers, before instantly switching back to her pleasant facade. “I only told her the truth.”

Karma knows that Kotori would never attack her out in the open like this. Still, it takes an extraordinary amount of willpower to even let go of the handle of her knife.

“Did you tell her you’re a criminal?” she asks quietly, forcing herself to take a step forward. “You and your friends killed people, and now they’re gone forever.”

“I don’t wanna hear it from you,” Kotori hisses, boldly thrusting her face up to Karma’s. “Your body count is higher than all of ours were combined. You turned Rie and all of those people into another statistic, so who’s the real monster here?”

Karma wants to storm past her without a word, to not give her the satisfaction of watching her crumble at the edges, but Kotori backs up before she can unroot her feet.

“Won’t be long now,” she sing-songs, wiggling her fingers in a cheery wave as she slinks past Karma. “See you around...and that’s a promise.”

~~~

She’ll never show it, but Kotori is driving her insane.

She shows up at the coffee shop almost every other day that Karma is working, which makes Karma wonder who the hell is responsible for keeping her under surveillance. She has Megu pass on innocuous messages for her all the time, and something cold snowballs and builds inside of Karma each time she thinks of how close Kotori is getting.

Once, she even shows up at Karma’s apartment. She nearly has a heart attack when she walks in and sees Kotori cheerfully sitting there at the kitchen table, chatting away with her parents as if they’re long-lost friends, and _why are her parents so gullible?_

“Natsuki, there you are,” her mother exclaims, as if Karma isn’t standing frozen on the doormat, staring wide-eyed at Kotori, who beams back. “You remember Kotori-chan, right? From the gymnastics studio? You were best friends back in the day. Remember all the sleepovers and movie nights you had?”

“What are you talking about? We’re still best friends!” Kotori states confidently with a wave of her hand, her smile all teeth. “We should totally do another movie marathon sometime, though. I missed that while I was in SAO.”

“Why don’t you stay for dinner? It’s snowing so hard, I’d hate to send you back out in that storm.”

“Oh, are you sure? I wouldn’t want to be a bother,” Kotori says, all sugary sweet and concerned about overstepping; her eyes flash maliciously at Karma, and she wonders in cold despair why her parents can’t read the writing on the damn wall.

“Nonsense! Natsuki’s gotten pretty good at cooking, actually, so I’m sure it wouldn’t be a bother to make extra…”

As Natsuki drops her coat on the coatrack and kicks off her shoes, eyes never once leaving Kotori, she grins and hops up from her seat. “Here, I’ll help!”

“No, it’s fine,” Karma says, just a tiny bit proud of how even her voice holds. She doesn’t want Kotori anywhere near her with a knife in arm’s reach, no matter how unlikely it is for Kotori to actually make a move in front of Karma’s parents. “You’re the guest here.” She even puts on a thin little smile as she says (more like commands), “Sit down.”

This is _her_ domain. And Karma’s not sure if it feels like home anymore, but it is still a place where she has power. Kotori can’t take that from her. She _can’t._

She won’t be cornered in her own apartment.

Karma flinches as she cuts the pad of her thumb through the latex glove, and she flicks the water on, rinses the knife, and runs her hand under the water. In the background, she can hear them chattering away; it makes her sick.

“Why don’t you bring Haruhi-chan next time? I haven’t seen her in a while either.”

“Really? That’d be great! I’m sure Natsuki-chan would love to see Haruhi again, isn’t that right, Natsuki-chan?”

“Sure.” Stop talking, _get out,_ she wants to scream, but she refuses to let the words leave her throat. Not here, not in front of her parents.

“It would’ve been great if you could meet Rie too,” Kotori continues, and Karma’s grip on the knife tightens until she trembles where she stands. “She was another girl at our studio. Sorta like our leader, y’know? We all went into SAO together...but someone murdered her right in front of me and Haruhi.”

Karma wonders if it would feel therapeutic to stab this fish in the eyeball right now, or punch something until her knuckles bleed. Bile rises in her throat as her parents gasp in horror, and Kotori laps it all up greedily.

“It’s a terrible thing, for people to turn on each other in such a brutal game like that,” her father says in sorrow.

“I know,” Kotori says pitifully, her eyes drilling holes in Karma’s back. “We should’ve been helping each other out, not tearing each other apart like that…” Hatred suffuses her voice. “I bet the killer didn’t feel even a bit of guilt when she killed Rie.”

Karma struggles to keep her breathing even, blinking tears away, absolutely refusing to let them fall. She spent weeks, _months_ thinking about it. About the grief and the rage on her former friends’ faces when she murdered their friend in front of them. They were killers, but they were also some of the best friends she’d ever had in another life, and even knowing the pain of watching a friend die before her eyes, she inflicted it on them anyways.

(It really does feel like a whole other life, the one she led before the floating steel castle.)

_You think I haven’t hated myself every hour of every day for almost two years?_

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” her mother murmurs softly; she can practically imagine her mother patting Kotori’s hand in an attempt to comfort. “But what matters is that you’re alive. You and Natsuki both.”

Mostly composed again, Karma turns in time for Kotori to smile directly at her and say, “I’m glad she didn’t die too. I would’ve been so sad if our friendship ended like that. And now we have a chance to make things right in the real world!” She laces her fingers together and leans her chin on them, eyes unblinking, smile frozen on her face. “It really is a miracle. So I’m definitely gonna make the most of it.”

Karma comes to set down a dish on the table, eyes never leaving Kotori’s through the thin veil of steam. “Yeah, so am I.”

Her parents get up to help her get the food onto the table, and she leans in, planting her hands on the table while Kotori stares up at her, unblinking.

“Try and kill me,” she breathes with a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “Plenty of people stronger than you have tried and I’m still alive, so you’d better pray for a miracle.”

~~~

It’s thundering and snowing outside tonight in some freak weather show, and Karma can’t see a thing out her window except the blizzard, sitting at her desk with coffee and her NerveGear in the dead of night. She pulls the device closer with one arm and rests her chin on the cold surface with a sigh. Her eyes follow the steam tendrils up and up.

Lightning flashes, and a hand appears plastered to the outside of the window-

The chair slams into the wall as Karma leaps back, her heart pounding frantically, carving gouges in her rib cage, and the knife in her grip trembles as she stares, eyes wide-

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Slowly, she sinks to the floor, breaths still coming in ragged gasps, and she covers half her face with a gloved hand, damp with sweat, and giggles at how pathetic she is. Is she going insane? She’s probably going insane.

Being paranoid is something she’s used to; being paranoid all the time, every day, is not. It’s exhausting, it’s scary, and she hates it so much, but there’s nowhere left that she can afford to not be paranoid-

_Safe doesn’t exist anymore._

Nowhere--no _one--_ is safe.

Thunder snarls at her, all around her, and she buries her face in her knees and claps her hands over her ears, sobbing.

“I hate you,” she cries, and she knows she’s not talking to Kotori. “I want to go home, _please.”_

But no one’s here to hear her.

~~~

Karma bolts awake, one hand clutching at the knife buried in her gut and encountering nothing. Gasping for breath, she shivers, a thin layer of cold sweat sticking to her clothes, exacerbating the chilly morning.

She’s in her own bed, despite not remembering climbing back into it. It’s so familiar, in a way that she can never be sure of ever again.

But her alarm rings, and then it’s time to be

_perfect_

and _normal_

again.

“Get me out of here,” she begs the NerveGear sitting on the shelf, but she knows she’s all alone here.

~~~

_how to rise from the floor, when it’s not you I’m rising for?_ \- Next Right Thing (Kristen Bell; Frozen II)

_I hope someday I’ll make it out of here, even if it takes all night or a hundred years_ \- lovely (Billie Eilish ft. Khalid)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Karma's doing Great. :)
> 
> She definitely should be asking for help with her whole situation with Kotori, but the only people who can help her are the local authority who are supposed to be keeping a better eye on Kotori in the first place, and Karma absolutely refuses to seem like she is anything less than normal to them. Nothing would come of asking Kirito or any of her old KoB friends, since they don't live anywhere near her, for one, and they have less power than she does. But the real problem is her refusing to trust anyone but herself (and even that's iffy). Heathcliff broke that for her, maybe permanently. Besides, she also was sort of terrible at that in the first place, when she refused to really reach out to anyone but him in SAO (and look where that got her). Also, she doesn't have her numbers and stats anymore that made her one of the most untouchable players in the game, and her second most precious friend/found family member, who she can't even see in person, is still in a coma. Plus, y'know, the existential crisis she had after being betrayed by Heathcliff still hasn't been resolved yet, so...
> 
> By the way, everything is great.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, slippery slope ;)

_I’ll stand here existing and feeling wretched existence, consuming life force ‘til I grow distant -_ Unravel (Toru Kitajima; Bricie and Narutee cover)

~~~

Karma is working when her phone starts buzzing. She sneaks a peek at the caller ID and frowns when she sees it’s from Megu, who should know she’s at work. With a sigh, she silences the call, but less than a second later, it starts buzzing again.

She feels a tap on her shoulder and nearly jumps before realizing it’s just her coworker.

“I can cover for a sec,” she offers, and Karma smiles briefly in thanks.

“I’m at work, Megu,” she says as she picks up.

There’s a brief pause, and she wonders if it was just a butt dial or something when Megu’s voice comes through, cross and staticky.

_“Didn’t I tell you to ask for today off?”_ she asks evenly, her tone buzzing with ill-disguised irritation.

Karma thinks back. “...Oh yeah, you did. My bad. We got a new employee the other day, so it’s been a bit hectic. Why, what is it?”

_“...It’s his birthday,”_ she says, clearly agitated.

Karma is left mentally buffering for a moment before it clicks. “Oh,” she says, very smartly, while staring at the date on her phone’s lock screen.

She hears Megu sigh, and she can imagine her taking off her glasses and rubbing the bridge of her nose like she does when she’s annoyed. “Look, I’m sorry, it slipped my mind.”

_“I told you—never mind,”_ Megu sighs, making an audible effort to restrain herself. She’s probably pacing back and forth somewhere. _“Can you maybe get out early?”_

“Yeah, probably.” She’s a pretty good employee, always on time and rarely making mistakes, not too bad with dealing with customers. “I’ll ask. Just a sec.”

Another staticky sigh, and then the line goes dead.

A few minutes later, Karma messages her saying that she can leave after the lunch rush hour, getting a short affirmative response, and a pointed, _[Don’t forget.]_

She sighs, tucking her phone away, although she can’t exactly blame her friend for being short with her. Despite her best efforts, Karma has probably been unintentionally curt with Megu at least once or twice this past week or so. Plus, it was admittedly a bad move, forgetting the birthday of her dead ex-boyfriend.

(Can she really call him an ex if they didn’t technically break up?)

With another sigh, she apologizes to her coworker for taking so long and gets back to the simple, repetitive, aromatic process of making coffee.

~~~

A disgruntled Megu is waiting by the entrance to the cemetery, huddled in her coat. She looks up as Karma tromps her way through the snow towards her and cracks a strained smile.

“You made it,” she says, falling into step with her.

“My memory’s not _that_ bad,” she snarks, trying to smile apologetically. Her memory’s actually pretty good when it comes to stuff like enemy equipment and builds, guild and party numbers, death counts, stuff like that. Important stuff.

She feels a brief pang of guilt that this isn’t considered ‘important’ to her subconscious, then she shoves it aside. Hasn’t she got enough to worry about already?

But he was Megu’s friend too, so she goes through the motions with her, mumbling a few generic words when Megu looks at her expectantly, and trailing after her while they wander the streets in relative silence. They soon arrive at a park, where kids are building snowmen and forts and having snowball fights.

“...up with you? Oi.”

Karma blinks when Megu tugs at her sleeve, eyes narrowed irritably. “What?”

“I’ve been calling your name over and over,” she huffs, little clouds of white obscuring her face briefly.

She scratches her head. “Oops.” For some reason, it doesn’t click anymore. The sound of her name simply won’t register in her mind; she can hear it, but if she’s not actively paying attention for it, it’s like the signals just don’t make it to her brain.

Megu sighs, slumping back in her seat on a snow-encrusted bench. “...Hey, Natsuki?”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t have to if it’s uncomfortable for you,” she says slowly, nearly mumbling the words, “but...I’ve been wondering for-”

“How did he die?”

It’s hard to tell if Megu blushed with her face already bright red from the cold, but she nods uncomfortably, and Karma sits down next to her with a sigh.

“You could’ve just asked. It was two years ago,” she says in mild exasperation.

She wonders which version of the story to tell Megu; eventually, she decides on the truth. It’s a hard pill to swallow, it always is; maybe Megu will understand her better this way.

“It was on day five of the game. We’d gone outside the safe zone to get a head start to the next town,” she begins, slouching down in her seat. “He was showing off a bit, handling the monsters by himself.”

Megu sighs into her scarf. “Sounds like him,” she remarks wistfully.

“Yeah, well, it drew some unwanted attention,” Karma continues, her tone darkening. “Some player-killers-”

Megu’s head snaps up. “Wait, you mean...players who killed other players?” At Karma’s slow nod, she clutches the end of her scarf in a white-knuckled fist. “B-but...that early on in the game? Why-”

“They were desperate. And angry. And felt they had nothing to lose, probably.” Karma shoves her hands in her pockets. “Three of them cornered us, demanding we empty our inventory.” She huffs, clenching her hands into fists; it doesn’t hurt much at all anymore, after two years, but it’s not a pleasant memory regardless. “He was an idiot. Shouted, ‘I’m a beta tester, so you’d better go away before I kick your ass,’ or something like that. Of course, that only made them angrier; plenty of people hated beta testers in the early stages of the game.”

Karma scrunches up her nose as a snowflake lands on it. “I got out, and he didn’t.”

And after that was when her life in Aincrad truly began—for better or worse.

She catches Megu staring disbelievingly at her out of the corner of her eye and shrugs. “That’s it.” Megu doesn’t need to know all the details.

Megu opens her mouth, brow furrowed in discontentment, then closes it again. She grips her scarf tighter, jaw visibly clenched, and her breath quickens, tiny, angry little puffs of white clinging in the air before her. Karma ignores her; Megu has always had a strong, if rigid, sense of right and wrong, making it quite easy to rile her up.

The snow starts to pick up, and Karma sighs and gets to her feet, shivering. “We should probably head back soon before the weather gets any worse. When you said ‘white Christmas’, I don’t think either of us thought it’d be snowing this m-”

“You make it sound like it was his fault.”

She blinks, peering through the snow at Megu. “What?”

Her brown eyes stare bitterly at Karma from behind the lens of her glasses, obscured in some places by snow.

“He was just trying to protect you, wasn’t he?” she demands, hands clenched tight around her scarf. “Couldn’t you stand to be a little more grateful?”

Her words and tone crack like a whip. Karma breathes evenly, but the air doesn’t feel like it’s warming inside of her lungs.

She knows where Megu’s coming from. Megu was how Karma met him in the first place. He was a year older than her, and since Megu was always a grade ahead, they were childhood friends until he moved away. When they were in high school, he came back, seeming so much more knowledgeable and confident, but there’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance.

If it weren’t for him, maybe she’d remember what it was like to have clean, unbloodied hands from before she plunged that knife into the back of one of those player killers he’d drawn the attention of. Maybe she’d remember what it was like to be able to stand here and breathe without knowing that in order to do so, she had to take away others’ ability to do the same.

Megu doesn’t know what she’s talking about, and Karma has the irresistible urge to tell her so.

“Come on,” she says flatly instead, “I’m walking you back to your apartment.” She doesn’t know when Kotori is going to strike, but she’s not going to let harm come to Megu.

Megu doesn’t move from her seat. “Do you even miss him at all?!” she snaps, blinking rapidly when her voice catches.

She can’t hold the weight of Megu’s glare, and her gaze slides away. “Of course. He didn’t deserve to die.”

But it’s been two years and she’s lost so much more than a childhood sweetheart.

Tears sparkle in Megu’s eyes as she pushes past Karma, who silently trails after her as they make their way to the bus stop.

Karma doesn’t care when they call her heartless, really. But it’s a little different when her best friend does it, saying the words explicitly or not. Best friends are supposed to understand, right? Best friends are supposed to know what you need to hear and how to say it so that you get it, right?

When she’s by herself, sitting on the bus on the way back, she gazes out the window at the near whiteout that’s storming outside, wind howling. They’re driving slow, but she doesn’t care. More time to herself, with her thoughts—not that that’s necessarily a good thing.

Best friends aren’t supposed to judge you-

“And you weren’t supposed to leave me either,” she mumbles, but she’s the only one on the bus, the only one stupid enough to be out in this weather, the only one who isn’t quite alive enough to care anymore.

She’s learned the hard way that reality, virtual or otherwise, doesn’t always align with expectations.

The truth really always is a hard pill to swallow.

~~~

_[Hey, sorry for being so short with you the other day.]_

Sitting in the coffee shop’s staff lounge, Karma stares at the words on the screen, slurping on her own coffee. With a sigh, she types back a simple, short message.

_[It’s fine.]_

She won’t apologize. She wasn’t wrong. Megu wasn’t there. How can she tell Karma that she was wrong? Megu had always looked up to that boy even from when they were all young. Her feelings clouded her judgement.

Besides, it’s not like Megu’s actually sorry. Megu doesn’t text apologies; she always does it in person, or at the very least, through a phone call. She’s always been big on clear communication, saying things straight, face to face. She doesn’t want to communicate now; she doesn’t want to have been wrong.

“It’s fine,” she sighs out loud, flexing her fingers around her paper cup of lukewarm coffee. “It’s fine…”

She shifts in her seat, picking at the cardboard sleeve of her cup restlessly, and chews on her lip. Opening up her contacts, she scrolls through the (pitifully small) list, half-heartedly looking for someone she can chat with, but the one person she really wants to talk to isn’t on here.

“Um, excuse me?”

Karma blinks, shutting off her phone. “Yeah?” For some reason, she responds just fine to general attention-grabbers like those. Even if it’s not directed at her, she’ll usually hear it anyway. But anything with her name in it won’t ring any bells at all.

The new employee, a teenage boy a year or two younger than her, is standing awkwardly at the doorway. “Er, where’s the receipt tape? I sort of ran out.”

She gets to her feet, grabbing her lukewarm drink. “Here, I’ll show you.” She peeks out front to check that there’s someone manning the cash register, and she casts a critical eye over the glass display of decorated pastries. “Might as well refill some of the baked goods while we’re at it.”

Since she’s still on break, she hands the items to her coworker, not wanting to be out front if she doesn’t have to. Kotori managed to wrestle Karma’s work shift information out of an unsuspecting coworker, so she’s taken to coming to pester her whenever she can. She apparently can’t get out too much because she’s still being kept on a leash, thankfully, but that also means Karma never knows when she’s really going to show up.

“Hey, I just got a text asking if we wanted to meet up at the pub in Gattan later. We can go out and grind XP, hunt a few monsters with the rest of the gang.”

“Yeah, sounds great. I wanted to work on flying a bit more anyways.”

“I hear you. Flying in VR took me some time to get used to.”

Karma stops mid-step, pivoting sharply on her heel. Then she quickly ducks back into the staff lounge and pulls out her phone; it takes three tries for her trembling fingers to type in _[VR flying]_ into the search bar.

At the top of the results is a VRMMO game called Alfheim Online.

More frenzied searches reveal that the game is based off of Norse mythology with nine different ‘races’ of fairies that can indeed fly, that it’s the most popular video game in Japan right now (probably largely because of the flight engine), that it was created for another FullDive rig called the AmuSphere with more safety precautions. It’s not the only VR game out there, but apparently, it revitalized the VR industry after the SAO crisis, and it’s currently the best of its kind in terms of the game engine and design, according to reviews.

It’s been around since over a year ago, to Karma’s surprise. Is it that mystical and fun that people were willing to play it while the world was still reeling from SAO?

The questions bubble up in her head while she mindlessly goes back to work. The stars don’t seem to be as wildly misaligned today, since even Kotori doesn’t make another surprise visit before her shift’s over.

On her way home, she stops by a game store, the same one that her ex-boyfriend bought a copy of SAO for her from.

There it is, sitting front and center in the display cases. It certainly looks quite magical, with the enormous tree standing in the center, the canopy shrouded by clouds. On the back is a world map, detailing each race’s territory, with the World Tree in the middle, ringed by a mountain range.

She buys it on an impulse and makes a phone call on the way home.

“Hey, Argo, what do you know about Alfheim Online?”

~~~

When she gets home, she goes to her room, tossing the case for Alfheim Online on her desk. Argo had a lot to say about ALO, but one thing in particular stands out.

It’s compatible with NerveGear.

She sits down on her bed, leaning back against the wall and reaching for the device. Cradling it in her hands, running the pads of her fingers over the cracks and grooves, she bites back the longing and casts another glance at the colorful art on the game disc case.

“But it’s not Aincrad,” she mumbles, staring forlornly at the winged fairies soaring.

Truth be told, she hasn’t even considered the possibility of returning to the virtual world. She’s thought about it countless times, she’s wished for it all the times the real world is too much (increasingly often these days), but she never thought it could be done.

With a shake of her head, she reaches for the case. “It doesn’t matter if it’s not Aincrad,” she declares quietly, ripping off the plastic covering. “As long as it’s not the real world…”

It takes a bit of fiddling around, but she manages to plug everything in. When she hears a noise from the living room, though, she suddenly remembers her parents are still awake. What if they walk in and see her asleep with her NerveGear on again? They’ll freak out. They won’t think twice before trying to take it away from her.

Regretfully, she puts the NerveGear down. “Wait just a little bit longer,” she whispers, as if it’s going anywhere. In some irrational way, she’s actually scared that it might.

She reads _Wuthering Heights_ again to pass time, but she barely takes in a word, unlike usual. That’s okay. She’s read this book enough times to have pretty much memorized it. But trudging her way through it brings her right up to her parents’ bedtime, and she soon hears them settling down in their room.

Quietly, she makes herself coffee and stays up surfing the web, watching stupid videos mindlessly until enough time has passed. After checking that her parents are dead to the world, she shuts and locks the door behind her and reaches for the NerveGear.

There’s something in her chest that’s been asleep since the rest of her awoke from Aincrad. That part of her yawns, stretches, and purrs, thrumming at the prospect of going back to the virtual world.

Going _home._

Or, at least, the closest to home that she can get. Anywhere that’s not in the real world is close enough. She’ll take it.

She checks her phone again to see if she has any messages, especially from Megu. A blank lock screen is all she gets, and she tosses it aside.

The NerveGear is a perfect fit still, snug over her braids. Her heartbeat starts to accelerate as the tint of the dark gray translucent visor slides over her vision, and she takes a deep breath in. Once she dives in, she won’t even need to breathe.

A quiet, wet laugh escapes her lips as she lies back, pulling the covers snugly up over herself. She’ll go to sleep tonight like this, and the only dreams she’ll have will be fantastic ones.

And when she opens her eyes again, she’ll be in the virtual world—just like the last two years.

“I missed you,” she whispers to the ceiling, eyes sliding shut contentedly.

Last time she was here, she’d just gotten off the phone with her ex-boyfriend, who had to talk her out of backing out at the last minute. Her hands had been trembling then too, her mouth dry, her heart racing, but for an entirely different reason—she was leaving everything she knew, she was leaving her home for a scary new world.

Everything is different now. After all, she’s just going home.

With confidence, she commands:

_“Link start.”_

~~~

_heavy wings grow lighter, I’ll taste the sky and feel alive again_ \- Vanilla Twilight (Owl City)

_maybe she just can’t forget all the miles they have driven since the moment that they met_ \- Last of Her Kind (Alec Benjamin)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thought I'd give a little more backstory, while simultaneously widening the rift between her and Megu. Multitasking is fun :D
> 
> Alfheim, here we go!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're finally in Alfheim!
> 
> Also, 'Let It Go' correlates with Karma so much more than I expected it to. Actually, Karma and Elsa themselves have more in common than I expected. Ice can be incredibly sturdy sometimes and also very brittle at others, and you don't know it's unstable until it's too late ;)
> 
> Happy New Year, by the way :D

right, no wrong, no rules for me - Let It Go (Idina Mendez, Frozen)

~~~

“Welcome to Alfheim Online,” an automated female voice says calmly. “First, enter your gender and character name.”

Still reeling slightly from being in another virtual world, Karma hits the female icon, then moves her hands to the keyboard. She has ‘Karma’ typed in before she hesitates.

Her and Kirito’s names were all over the news for a short while after they left Aincrad. Even with intervention, it was impossible to completely erase that moment, especially when so many people saw it go down. Sure, there aren’t many SAO players in her corner of the world, so it’s not like she gets recognized on the streets all the time. Even her parents don’t know that she’s Karma (and they probably wouldn’t believe it anyway).

But she can be totally anonymous here. Besides, she’ll always be Karma, but she figures she might as well switch it up.

“Next, select your race.”

Nine different female avatar fairies pop up in front of her, rotating in a circle slowly. Races, huh? The blurb mentioned something about that. She can already tell there’s going to be a rather _unique_ dynamic within the game between races, especially if the world is divided up into territories and such.

It’ll be so different from Aincrad.

She’ll take it still, because what else is there?

Her gaze is drawn to a red-winged avatar, and she hits the ‘yes’ button before it rotates away.

“Salamander, correct?” the automated voice asks, and she hits ‘yes’ again. She didn’t do much research on the details, so the only thing that drew Karma to the ‘Salamander’ class was the red—like the Knights of the Blood Oath.

“Your character’s appearance will be decided at random. Is that okay?”

She hits ‘yes’ again enthusiastically. If she doesn’t look like herself, that eliminates risk of her being recognized, especially with her new handle. The chances of another SAO survivor playing another VR game, this one in particular, are astronomical. But she came here to escape, and she’s not going to let anything jeopardize that.

“You will now be transferred to your hometown in Salamander territory. Good luck, player.”

~~~

She’s free-falling.

Hot air blasts her suddenly, taking her breath away as she twists and turns awkwardly midair. The sun is fierce, acrid and boiling, and beats down on the land for as far as she can see. It’s all sand, a neverending desert with a few landmarks here and there.

And right beneath her is what she assumes is her hometown in Salamander territory, according to the game. It’s a sprawling city of mud bricks and sandstone, all in shades of sandy browns and reds ranging from a brownish rust to a rich wine red. In the center is a huge structure resembling a castle keep right out of a medieval fairy tale, where a knight would go for an audience with the king to be told to slay a dragon, except fairy tales are usually a little prettier and not located in the middle of a blazing desert

The ground is approaching at quite a dizzying rate, though. She’s about to try to tuck into a roll when the game suddenly slows her descent. A shimmery sound effect reaches her, and she twists around to see a pair of translucent, sharp red wings on either side of her, parachuting her down to land on the sandstone ground with a bit of a stumble.

“Amazing,” she murmurs, still a bit overwhelmed. So that’s what the flight engine is like…

The dry, crisp air smells like hot food cooking, and she can feel sweat beading on her skin already, an admittedly welcome change from the unnaturally violent snowstorms they’ve been seeing in her part of the real world.

Karma holds out her hand, letting the sun play through her fingers. It feels exactly as it did in Aincrad, like warm silk spun into impossibly fine strands flowing like water.

And then it hits her all at once, all over again—she’s back in the virtual world.

With a joyful shout, she takes off again, laughing as she flies uncontrollably upward for a few seconds. Still, she didn’t live in the virtual world for two years for nothing, and she quickly regains control of her body, spiralling around and entertaining herself with a few somersaults and other tricks. As much as she loves Aincrad, she has to admit, this flight engine is definitely something else.

She lets her wings go, for a moment hanging suspended in the air. With a whoop, she starts to freefall again, and she twists around, angling her body towards a roof nearby. She lands perfectly, skidding down the side and leaping, easily clearing the gap in the street.

For what has to be at least half an hour, she runs and jumps and flies across the city, relishing in her newfound freedom. Her real body is still not at its best condition, but here? Here, she can do _whatever she wants._ No one knows who she is. It’s a clean slate, and she’s going to make the most of it.

Karma lands on the street in a puff of dust and sand, startling some other players; the NPCs just try to sell her stuff. She throws an apologetic wave over her shoulder, in too good of a mood to stop now, before she takes off running through the city, making her way towards the city gates. What lies beyond them? The world of Alfheim, while different from Aincrad, is just waiting to be explored.

Oh, but she should probably go over her character first. She trots over to a main square area, blending in perfectly amongst a dozen other red-clad players, before sitting down and pulling up her menu.

Or, at least trying.

Karma has a brief moment of full-blown _panic_ before she tries the other hand, sagging in relief when the menu pops up. The logout button looks functional, and she dismisses the ‘would you like to log out’ message.

“I need pants,” she realizes, staring down at her beginning gear. For girls, there’s a skirt, of course. Hopefully, she didn’t flash anyone on her impromptu parkour trip…

“Don’t laugh, you,” she mutters, shaking her head.

She quickly switches her sword to her other side, since the starting position is for right-handers, and draws the blade. It’s what she expected out of a starting weapon—plain steel, leather grip. The blade is broader and shorter than she’s used to, so she makes a mental note to get it replaced soon. She can work with this for now, though.

“Now, let’s see how much money I—oh, what the-”

She’s pretty sure she’s _not_ supposed to have about six thousand plus moneys (yuld, they’re called?) right off the bat—partly because six thousand, five hundred and seventy-four seems like a rather arbitrary number, and partly because she remembers having approximately that much col by the time she was done buying crystals for the 75th boss fight.

Fingers trembling now, she checks the other parts of her menu, her shock building and building upon itself as she does. Her inventory? Full of uncoded trash items. Her skills? The exact same. Her stats? Also the exact same, down to the single digits.

A cold shiver claws its way up her spine, and she swallows hard, a thrill of something shooting through her.

_No way…_

It must be some kind of glitch. Maybe it’s because she’s using her NerveGear? Everyone in this game is using the AmuSphere, presumably, with no prior VR experience. Does that have anything to do with it?

She wishes he were here so she could ask someone who would have the answers.

For now, she quickly deletes the trash items, since they won’t be any use to her. And if they start to register as glitches, that could cause problems.

Her necklace was probably in there, she suddenly realizes, and regrets everything. A tight feeling of numb grief clenches in her chest, and she waves her menu away. Gloves, she thinks to herself distantly. She’ll have to get those too.

After making a stop at a clothing shop, she walks out with a cloak, leggings, and a few pairs of gloves. The shade of red is a tad too bright, but she’ll put up with it.

With a sigh, she turns to inspect herself in the fountain water. The intro NPC voice said that her appearance would be determined at random, so she’s curious as to what she looks like.

To her mild surprise, she doesn’t look too different. Her hair is a dark crimson, flowing down her back in smooth waves. Unlike her real hair, it’s actually somewhat manageable when loose, which makes her almost miss her bristling bird’s nest. She starts to braid it as she inspects her other features, making faces at herself in her reflection.

Her eyes are a bright, ruby-like shade of red, intense and striking, and her skin is a little tanner than she is in real life (which isn’t hard to achieve; her real body hasn’t seen much sun in the last two years). Her facial features are different, of course, but not by too much.

She flips her braids over her shoulders and sighs, running a gloved hand through the water. It’s cool and smooth compared to the desert heat of this city.

It feels like Aincrad, she realizes, for the nth time, and a prickling sensation starts to nag at the back of her mind. The heat, the light, the smells, the water…

It’s the _exact_ same as Aincrad.

She came here to come home, but she didn’t think she would come _this_ close to it.

And somehow, the fact that she has...it just doesn’t sit right with her.

She flicks her fingers at the water surface, watching droplets shoot back into the liquid at a level of detail that shouldn’t be possible except in that steel castle. The ripples rush and collide, and behind her, she spots a glimpse of bright burnished steel behind her reflection-

In a whirl of red, she shoots to her feet, whirling around, heart leaping into her throat with instinctive hope-

“Hey, you.”

The gruff voice snaps her out of her stupor, and she blinks at the tall, armored player approaching. His hair bristles like live flames in a bruise-like purplish red color, eyes of a similar shade peering down his hawk-like nose at her.

She sighs. Definitely not _him._ Her mind’s playing tricks.

But still, she refuses to ignore her instincts. There’s something else here, something besides the too similar world mechanics, that she knows better than the back of her hand.

Some _one_ else here.

A quick once-over tells her that he’s more than an average player. His armor is clearly high level, for one, but his limber movements tell of more experience than most players in the virtual world.

Another SAO player…? No, he doesn’t move _that_ well.

Her eyebrows crawl upward as he stops in front of her. “Yes…?” she asks slowly, blinking owlishly at him.

He sweeps an appraising look over her. Not in a weird way, but in the way that she was doing a second earlier—judging, assessing. Somehow, he seems to come to a similar conclusion that she did—that she is not ordinary. Was it that easy to spot?

“You’re a new player, aren’t you?” he asks expectantly, his voice like gravel. “I saw you fall from the sky.” At her slightly skeptical look, he adds, “From the keep.”

“Right…” she trails off, getting to her feet. “Yeah, I’m new. Who’re you?” She seriously doubts he’s a tutorial NPC or anything.

“My name is General Eugene,” he says evenly. “I’m the leader of the Salamander army.”

She stares. “You guys have an army?” More importantly, the general of the army is talking to her? A veritable newbie? This makes her instantly suspicious.

“The best one in the game,” he agrees, looking proud. “The Salamanders are the strongest race, so naturally, we have the most cohesive army.”

And she’s already starting to see the _unique_ dynamic she was suspecting when she first realized there would be races dividing the world up into territories.

“I’m sure,” she says flatly.

His bushy eyebrows contract slightly, and she figuratively backtracks a step. Might not be the best to antagonize the general of the army. Besides, if he’s leading the main combative units of an entire race, then he has to be a goldmine of information.

“What makes Salamanders the ‘strongest’?” she asks with genuine curiosity. “I didn’t do any research before making my avatar, so I don’t know much about the game.”

Eugene raises his eyebrows, as if in disbelief, before he turns away, motioning for her to follow.

They go to a small cafe, and he treats her to coffee, dismissing her arguments by saying that she’ll need her money if she’s just starting out. She doesn’t bother correcting him and just savors her drink. Only in the virtual world can you drink piping hot coffee without the slightest bit of discomfort. And honestly, if he’s trying to get on her good side or whatever, then at least he’s heading in the right direction.

After getting their drinks, they make their way through the city. He apparently doesn’t like standing still for too long, and neither does she.

“I’m sure you at least know that the world is divided up into nine races,” he starts, and she nods. “You know what they are?”

“Salamanders, Sylphs, Cait Sith, Pooka, Gnomes, Leprechauns, Spriggans, Undines, and Imps,” she says promptly. She at least knows that much from having looked at the disc case so many times.

“Right. Each race specializes in a different type of magic-”

“There’s magic in this game?” she blurts out, wide-eyed.

He rolls his eyes. “There’s magic in just about every MMORPG. Have you never played one before?”

Actually, she has played one, and only one—the _one_ MMORPG that _didn’t_ have magic.

“Not really,” she says aloud. She only lived inside of one for two years.

One bushy eyebrow crawls skyward. “And you chose a VR game for your first one?”

“Indeed I did.” He probably doesn’t catch the irony lacing her tone.

“Bold. Well, to answer your question, yes, there is magic. Each race specializes in a different kind.”

He goes through to list them all—Salamanders wield fire, Sylphs use wind magic, Cait Sith are beast-tamers, Pooka play music for different buffs and effects, Gnomes employ earth magic, Leprechauns are blacksmiths, Spriggans specialize in illusion magic, Undines fight with water magic, and Imps have dark magic as well as the ability to fly underground, unlike any other race.

“The magic is summoned via incantations, and the stronger the spell, the more MP it costs,” he continues. He gestures with his left hand, pointing up. “Your MP is right under HP.”

She glances up; indeed, there’s a blue bar sitting underneath the green one. Her magic points are pretty low, apparently, which makes sense. She has her SAO HP, but SAO MP didn’t exist, so it makes sense that she would have the starting amount.

“How do you learn the incantations, then?”

“Each fairy has a basic list in their menu. It’ll walk you through the pronunciations. More advanced spells have to be learned through quests and such.”

She nods slowly. “So...what are the territory rules? Like, what comes out of dividing up the world?”

“If you’re in the settlements of your territory, you can’t take damage, but if you’re in other races’ towns, then you can take damage,” he explains. “A lot of the rest of the land is neutral territories. Neutral settlements are safe zones.”

Safe zone. The words make her feel better than they probably should.

“So, the whole middle of the world is neutral territory?” she asks. He nods, and she’s struck with another thought. “How big is the world? Like, how long would it take to fly the diameter of the world?”

Eugene frowns thoughtfully and takes a deep breath, as if preparing to rant. “Well, there’s a ten minute time limit on how long you can fly. And every player flies at a different speed depending on their build and stats. Plus, there are monsters everywhere. And if you were going to fly a straight line from one side of the map to the other, you would have to go through the mountains, and you can’t fly over them-”

“Okay,” she interrupts quickly, storing that information away for future reference, “what about flying from one capital city to the next territory’s capital city?”

Eugene clearly isn’t used to being interrupted, but he answers her question nonetheless. “Five or six hours, give or take. Including monsters and rest stops.”

Karma nods to herself. She can probably make it in less, if her stats are really what they seem to be. Every inch of her buzzes with a frenetic energy, excited to test out her strength.

“So.” She finishes her coffee and crumples the cup in her hand, watching it explode into shards. “You really don’t like Sylphs, huh?”

His eyes flash. “No Salamander does. They’re always trying to farm the neutral land between our territories, assuming it belongs to them. We have to divert valuable resources to guarding our own farmers from them.”

Karma hums, unconcerned, mostly just curious. “I’m sure they think the same of you guys. So I’m guessing the Salamanders and Sylphs are two of the more popular races?”

“The most,” he admits. “Followed by Undines and Cait Sith.”

“Hmm.”

She thinks of Aincrad, and its one hundred floors. To be honest, she’s always somewhat regretted that they couldn’t see all one hundred. She is confident that they were designed with just as much care and precision and detail as the others.

“So what’s the point of this game? There’s got to be some kind of end goal, right?” she asks. To be honest, just living in this world is enough for Karma, but she knows that only some people would be satisfied with that, VR or not. They need something to keep coming back for.

In response, Eugene turns, and she follows his gaze. Far, far away, shrouded and blurred by the sheer distance, is the World Tree. The magnitude of it takes her breath away for more than a second when she thinks about it. If what he said about the flight time from just one city to the next is true, then how far away is the World Tree? And how big is it that they can still see it from here?

“They say that the Fairy King Oberon lives at the top of the tree in a sky palace,” Eugene explains. “The first race to fight their way through a near impossible dungeon and reach the top will be granted unlimited flight by him.”

“Oh,” she says in realization, remembering just how addicting that flight engine was. “That makes more sense.” No wonder all the races are at war.

The Fairy King is probably the GM. She wonders if he (or she, maybe) actually does spend his time up there, or if they too chose to just play amongst the people anonymously. The thought stiffens her spine and clenches in her gut uncomfortably. There may not be a guillotine over anyone’s necks anymore, but it’s still a discomforting thought.

Did the GM design this game with the intent to create virtual war? She can’t help but wonder. In a normal MMORPG, this setup would be rather benign, and actually probably fun to play, if you could set up a team with different races and specialties and stuff. But in a VR game, where you are literally living and breathing it? It’s a whole different story.

Aincrad, for all its danger, was never segregated like this (and she shudders to think of how much worse it could’ve been if it was). The closest it really got to that was red and orange players versus green players, separated only by the divisions that they themselves created.

That was one good thing that came of SAO. It brought them together, in some ways.

The keep casts them in shadow as they approach it. She’d been letting Eugene decide where they were going within the city, and it appears they have reached their destination.

“This is the headquarters of Gattan,” he says, waving at the imposing sandstone building. “It serves as a general hub for people leaving the city, since it’s easier to take off from higher up.” He gives her a strange look here. “And it’s also the army headquarters and training areas.”

“Are you trying to recruit me?” she asks, amused.

“Yes,” he admits bluntly, staring at her like he’s trying to figure her out. “I saw you flying from the keep. Most players need to start out using the controller, and many get used to it and don’t bother mastering voluntary flight. You did it within seconds of starting the game.”

She blinks. “Oh. I didn’t think it was a big deal. I wanted to fly, so I did.” That was probably just a matter of pride, to be honest. She spent so long living in VR, and it is her home in every way; no way was she going to be stymied by an integral part of any virtual world.

“And that determination is a powerful thing,” he says, eyes gleaming. “We could use someone like you in the army.”

Karma keeps her expression and tone perfectly even. “Thanks, but I don’t fancy being ‘used’.”

Fighting in an army sounds like it would be an interesting exercise, but it doesn’t quite appeal to her. She’s always been a solo unit; even when she was at her highest point of involvement with KoB, she was a leader, subordinate to only one other _(and look where that went)._

She’s been fighting alone for a long time now, and besides, the last time she had other people on her side against enemies that weren’t just NPC monsters was an experience she would rather not repeat.

Karma continues before he can speak, still neutral.

“I want to explore the world on my own first. See what all the races are about, not just Salamanders. Maybe I’ll even go to the World Tree. Besides…” She looks up at where the canopy of the World Tree spirals into the clouds. “This whole separation between races just doesn’t sit well with me.”

His bushy eyebrows draw together. “It’s only a game,” he says dryly, and she gives a lopsided smile.

How _different_ things are now. It’s a good thing for them, but she’s not quite sure how she feels about it.

“To you, maybe,” she agrees, summoning her wings again. “Thanks for coffee, and the information. I appreciate it.”

“Wait.” He scrolls through his menu briefly, and a friend invite pops up in front of her. “In case you change your mind.”

She considers the friend request for a few seconds. It might be useful to have one of the more knowledgeable players in the game on her friends list, especially if she wants to keep updated on the goings-on of the world.

On the other hand…

With an inward groan at herself, she impulsively hits the ‘accept’ button. This is the virtual world, damn it. She came here to escape the paranoia...right?

Eugene nods in satisfaction. “Welcome to Alfheim Online and the Salamanders…” He trails off, reading the new name in his friends list. “...Catherine.”

~~~

Humming a catchy tune from an NPC bard, Karma half-skips into the kitchen, grabbing the milk and cereal. Her mother, who has a short break from work for once, is at the table already, and she looks up from her phone at Karma’s noisy entrance.

“You seem to be in a good mood today,” she comments, brow furrowed in bemusement.

“I am,” she agrees, even dancing in place a little as she makes herself breakfast. She didn’t dance in the tavern; it was too lonely without the partner she wanted. The food tasted divine, at least, and she’s making it a bucket list goal to try out the food in every race’s territory at least once.

“Have a good dream or something?”

Karma grins. Everything feels wrong, now that she got a taste of the virtual world again. By contrast, the real world, in her apartment with the plain walls instead of candlelit, saturated oak wood, that big bulky TV and smooth, shiny plastic...It all seems so _dull._ How did she live like this for a whole month?

“The best dream,” she agrees, well, dreamily.

But she knows that when night comes around and it’s time to go to sleep, she’ll wake up in Alfheim and everything will feel right again.

How do people balance real and virtual? Every part of her longs to just FullDive again, let herself fall fully into the virtual world of magic and freedom; she wants it so, so bad. This isn’t living, not with a foot in each world; how is she supposed to be free like that?

For now, though, it works. One step at a time.

If she ever does cross that bridge, she’ll make sure to burn it behind her.

~~~

_moments make minutes and minutes make hours as the dawn meets the dusk and I’ve pondered the night away -_ Sometimes Hearts Break (Nathan Wagner)

_lately, I’ve been in the backseat to my own life, trying to take control, but I don’t know how to_ \- I Don’t Wanna Be Sad Forever (Lauv)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I let her keep her stats, which makes it feel even more like 'home' for her. I never quite understood how Kirito got all of his old stats and items and skills back, but I assume it has something to do with the fact that he was using his NerveGear, which allowed for some kind of connection between SAO and ALO because the Cardinal system was the same too? I have no idea. I just went with that.
> 
> Oh yeah, if you're confused about the name 'Catherine', I have a headcanon that Heathcliff's name was taken from the character named Heathcliff in the book Wuthering Heights. If you've read Retribution, you probably have some vague memory of this XD And I've brought up the book a few times in this fic too. Catherine is another prominent character in the book. The book characters have a very, er, complicated relationship.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fragile peace starts to crack...These next few chapters are going to be So Much Fun!
> 
> On another note, the chapters are getting longerrrrrrr _oops_ :')

_clock strikes the seven, I go through my day, I say all the right things, put a smile on my face -_ Sometimes Hearts Break (Nathan Wagner)

~~~

Karma can’t stop thinking about Alfheim Online, and it’s kind of a problem.

She’s late several times to work because she’s busy playing ALO through the night, and although she tries not to get into lengthy solo boss fights later in the morning, she can’t help it sometimes. And although her body might be sleeping at night, her brain definitely isn’t. That’s fine, though. It’s fine. She’s definitely gone a full week without sleep before in Aincrad, so this is manageable. She’ll sleep on the weekends. Sure.

Playing ALO does put her in a good mood, though—but only for those precious few minutes after she wakes up, before it crashes down on her that she has to go a whole fourteen to sixteen hours without being able to go back. It distracts her, makes her irritable and inattentive (though she does her best not to show it), always checking the clock, fidgeting, waiting for the sun to set and her parents to finally go to sleep.

Her fingers itch whenever she glances at her NerveGear during the day. Her parents are always at work, so surely it wouldn’t hurt to play for a little while, would it?

But what if they call her? What if Megu calls her? What if they get suspicious when she doesn’t pick up? What if Kotori shows up? No, it’s too risky. And if she Dives during the day once, she’ll want to do it again, and again, and again. She’s still trying to keep _some_ semblance of precarious balance here. Whether she’s putting in effort is questionable, but some prideful, stubborn part of her wants to stick it out, to make it work, to _prove_ she can do it.

And the paranoia…

Her sleep deprivation probably has something to do with it, but she knows it’s because of Alfheim too. Because in Alfheim, she doesn’t need to worry about being ambushed in a side street and murdered if she’s in a Salamander town or some neutral settlement.

Of course, on the other hand, while she’s Diving, her real body is completely vulnerable, and she wouldn’t know until it’s too late. But once she puts on the NerveGear and goes to a whole other world, it’s almost hard to care, and that’s all she could ever want, for it to not have to feel like it matters.

In Alfheim, she can walk where she wants to, do what she wants, and no one can touch her. In Alfheim, she can cut through the diamond-like plates of a desert scorpion monster in one swing, and in the real world, she can barely carry a ten kilogram bag of flour from one room to the adjacent one without nearly falling on her face.

In Alfheim, _no one knows who she is._

And here? Kotori keeps showing up at her workplace, and at her house, and now she seems to have memorized what bus stops Karma goes to, and whenever Karma’s mother invites her to stay for the night, she politely demurs, all coy and sweet, and grins at Karma just to dig the knife in deeper, silently gloating about the fact that if she wanted to, she could, and it makes her feel sick and helpless and _I just wanna go home._

She sits on the floor in the bathroom and cries while the shower is running, so no one can hear her over the water.

“C-calm down,” she hiccups, repeating the same lines she’s been saying to herself for weeks now. “Y-you’re smart. Y-you can f-fight back. N-no matter wh-what she does…”

Her knife rests on the edge of the counter. She’s taken to practicing with one in Alfheim as well, working the motions into her muscle memory to the point where she can take them with her into the real world.

After getting dressed, she hurries to her room so her parents don’t see her bloodshot eyes. She locks the door behind her, checks the window, scans the streets beneath, before she turns to the NerveGear. She’s not sure if she can wait until she can be sure her parents are asleep.

“When they close their door,” she whispers to herself like a promise, pacing circles around her room. “That’s good enough.”

Her head snaps up from _Wuthering Heights_ when she hears the muffled sound of a door shutting down the hall, and she springs to her bed, rolling under the covers and grabbing her NerveGear. She beams at it, smiling fondly, and tucks it securely over her head, the excitement and anticipation and _relief_ bubbling over in her chest.

Tomorrow, and the next morning, and the morning after that, she’ll wake up and go through her day. She’ll say all the right things, put a smile on her face.

It’s just a job, right? Fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, and when her shift’s over, she gets to go home. Simple.

~~~

“I can’t believe you’re still on this.”

Karma holds another cross-shaped necklace up to the light, then tosses it back on its hook with a disappointed hum. “You don’t have to come with me.”

“I wanna know what you’re so obsessed about,” Megu declares from the next row over. “I think by this point, we’ve hit almost every jewelry shop in town…”

“I _know,_ and not a single one has something right,” she complains, unable to keep a hint of a growl from her voice.

“Why can’t you just custom order it?”

“That’s expensive. I’m not getting paid _that_ much.”

“Just ask your parents. Say it’s an early Christmas gift or something,” Megu sighs, clearly done with Karma and her necklace hunt. Karma’s sort of done too; it won’t even matter if they find the right necklace. It won’t have been from him.

“I don’t want to be in debt to them.”

Megu groans irritably; Karma can hear her facepalm from two aisles over. “‘In debt’? They’re your parents, not a bank. Jeez…”

Oops, wrong choice of words. She must be slipping.

“What about this one?”

Karma glances at an unimpressed Megu holding up another candidate. “Too skinny.”

Megu sighs. “Fine.” She carelessly tosses it on a random peg. Karma can _feel_ her staring at her. “Listen...are you, like...I dunno. Doing okay?”

She opens her mouth, and for a second, it’s on the tip of her tongue.

No, actually, thanks for asking. She is in fact _not_ okay. She’s dead tired all the time and nearly walked into oncoming traffic because she was so busy thinking about the best blacksmith shops in Arun. There’s a deranged girl gunning to kill her, probably in some cold back alleyway where the body can be tossed into a dumpster or something; in fact, she’s so deranged that nothing, not even the fact that she’s trying to murder a certified serial murderer, will deter her. Said deranged girl knows her work place, knows all the possible routes Karma could take to go home, and even knows where Karma’s apartment is, and no one has a _goddamn_ clue.

Her parents, and Megu, and everyone at work think Kotori is a charming, sweet girl who’s just looking to reconnect with friends after losing one to a bloodthirsty, psychopathic murderer. They have no idea what could happen if Karma closes her eyes while under the same roof as the girl. They have no idea that Kotori tends to follow her home every single day that she can, always mixing it up so Karma has no idea when to expect her. They have no idea that Kotori is a murderer, and they have no idea that Karma is one too.

And on top of that, she despises the real world. Breathing in car exhaust is like inhaling poison fumes. The coffee doesn’t even taste the same. The dull stars at night make her angry at the universe, and having to watch every side street opening for suspicious activity is draining and irritating and so far ninety-nine percent a vain endeavor of stupidity and irrational paranoia, but she keeps doing it for the one percent of the time that it won’t be, and it’s slowly driving her insane.

Humans are really bad with change. Karma is. Her parents are. Megu is too.

Megu doesn’t really think anything’s wrong with Karma. She just thinks Karma’s being annoying (which is, granted, not completely invalid) and wants to know why. She doesn’t really think there’s a significant underlying problem or anything, because there never has been before, not really. Why would there be now? It’s not like anything happened in SAO to change Karma so fundamentally that she doesn’t even recognize her name as her own anymore.

And ultimately, the answer that Megu is looking for is ‘fine’.

So Karma says, “What are you talking about? I’m fine.” It sounds a little too perfect, but then again, she’s gotten a _lot_ of practice saying a million and one different versions of it.

They still haven’t really patched things up after last week, when Megu snapped at her. Or in general, really. Megu is a bit proud from time to time, and Karma already has enough that she can’t ever stop apologizing for and doesn’t need more, so neither of them are inclined to make that step.

Megu sidles after Karma as they wander the aisles. “Are you sure?” she asks skeptically, her gaze boring into the back of Karma’s head. “You’ve been off lately.”

And it only took her this long to notice, didn’t it.

_He_ would’ve taken about point five seconds to notice as soon as the slightest thing was troubling her. Whether or not he would’ve confronted her about it on the spot was irrelevant. If it became a problem, he would, but otherwise, it was a comfort in and of itself to know that someone cared enough to simply _know_ when she was falling apart inside. He didn’t have to ask, she didn’t have to speak, he just _knew._

Where the hell is she going to find that ever again?

“Megu, I have someone who’s literally professionally trained and paid to ask me those questions, asking me those questions every week,” Karma says sarcastically, pretending to be highly invested in studying some more necklaces. “It’s their job. You don’t have to do it for them.”

And never mind the fact that she’s become a master of deflecting those invasive questions with poise. She’s even getting better at sprinkling in a bit of sarcasm here and there with a pretty smile, making meaningless small talk while contemplating which places would be the best to farm certain mats around Alfheim, waiting for the day they get tired of her crap and decide that she is indeed ‘fine’.

_If she doesn’t have him, then she doesn’t want anyone._

~~~

The walk back to the bus stop is a quiet one. Megu still seems to be debating with herself whether or not to push harder, and Karma decides to ignore her. If she wants to bring it up again, she can, but Karma’s response won’t change. She does not come when she’s called, and she does not move when she’s pushed.

A buzz from inside Karma’s sweatpants pocket alerts her to a text message, and she pulls out her phone.

_[Hey, if anyone’s got time, wanna Zoom? I gots some news :D - Sanza]_

“What’s that?”

With one hand, Karma lifts her coffee to her lips, using her other hand to thumbs up Sanza’s message. “A friend. He says he’s got news. Sounds like it’s good.”

Megu blinks hard. “‘He?’”

Karma rolls her eyes, unsurprised by Megu’s immediate jumping to conclusions. _“Not_ what you think.” Nothing against them, but she literally can’t imagine dating any of them; it’d be like dating an older brother—just, _no._

“Oh.” Looking nonplussed, Megu asks uncertainly, “So...what friends are these?”

“I have a life outside of you, you know,” Karma responds without looking up.

In her periphery, Megu goes bright red, looking away, blinking rapidly, her brow furrowing. “W-well, I know _that-”_ Her tone is full of poorly concealed disbelief. “I just…Well, y’know, in high school…”

Karma has to concede that one; she never did have many friends. After quitting the gymnastics studio, that already paltry number dwindled even further, to the point where Megu was the only person she regularly talked to.

“So are they from work, or…?”

“No,” she says, and leaves it at that.

Kili, Fultz, and Segro add their thumbs ups, and Fultz adds, _[Pretty sure it’s rush hour for Muldar right now, not sure if he’ll make it.]_

Holding her cup between her teeth by the lid, Karma types, _[And Uzala’s probably out cold.]_ He usually works night shifts.

_[Meh, we’ll put up with his ‘how could you leave me’ shtick later,]_ Segro replies.

Grinning, Karma sends an ROFL emoji. “Hang on, I’m gonna hop on a Zoom with them real quick.”

“What? Now?” Megu asks, looking back and forth between Karma and the bus pulling up.

Karma drains her coffee, waiting patiently for the Zoom to load. “I’ll take the next one back. See you later.”

Megu hesitates, but Karma doesn’t pay her any mind until she says, “I want to meet your friends.”

Her head snaps up, but the call finally goes through, and she shakes herself and grins at the camera. “Hey, guys!”

Kili is squinting at his screen, curls flopping into his face. _“Are you outside? It looks like it’s freezing out there.”_

“It’s not too bad. Here, let me grab some earbuds real quick-”

_“So what’s the news, Sanza?”_ Fultz interrupts. _“You look like you’re about to explode.”_

Sanza inhales eagerly, indeed looking like he’s about to explode. _“I got a new job!”_

Between trying to plug in earbuds and excitement from Sanza’s announcement, Karma nearly drops her phone on the snowy ground. Deciding to ignore the earbuds for now, she shouts happily, “Congrats!” hoping that they’ll be able to hear over the wind.

_“It’s the closer one too,”_ Sanza says happily, beaming. _“Not too far from the bus stop either, so thank god for that. I didn’t fancy walking a mile every day to go to work, especially when I’m still in rehab-”_

“Come on, let’s wait in there,” Megu interrupts, pointing at a convenience store behind them. “It’s cold.”

“You’re the one who wanted to stay behind,” Karma says coolly, lacking the will to try to mask her irritation; it buzzes in the back of her mind like a snoring nest of hornets, waiting to be prodded just one more time... “You can go inside if you want.” It _is_ freezing out here, but at least that’ll let her talk to her friends in peace.

With a huff, Megu shoves her hands in her pockets and trudges off, and Karma lets out a long sigh. She reaches for her earbuds again, finally plugging them in.

_“-got to teach a class as part of—oh, there you are, Karma. I thought you got kicked out for a sec,”_ Sanza is saying.

_“Who was that?”_ Segro asks curiously.

Karma shrugs, a small, dismissive gesture; the tension in her shoulders and her constant shivers from the cold make the motion abrupt and jerky. “Just a friend.”

Kili’s mouth twists in hesitant sympathy. _“Everything okay? You sound a little, uh…”_

_“Tired,”_ Fultz supplies.

She laughs humorlessly. “I’m always tired these days.”

_“Mood,”_ all three of them quip, and Karma laughs again with them, this time much more genuine, at their perfect synchronization of matching weariness.

“But really, it’s fine,” she reassures them. It’s a little strange; lying to them doesn’t feel nearly as... _blunt_ as it does when it comes to Megu. Maybe it’s because she’s lied to them dozens of times along the same lines of “I’m fine, it’s fine”, except it was never really a lie when she knew they could see through it with ease.

Does that make it better? Suddenly, she’s not sure, and something twists in her gut.

_“Are you sure?”_ Sanza asks gently, dark eyes concerned. _“I know we can’t help since we’re all so far apart, but you can tell us anything.”_

Suddenly, a mostly unrelated realization hits her, and their concern for her brings a wry half-grin, half-grimace to her face. She pushes a numb hand through loose strands of her hair with something between a sigh and a laugh. “I know, I know…”

_She’s_ the baby now. She’s the youngest of the group at nineteen—albeit only by three years from Kili, but still the youngest, without Asuna.

It doesn’t matter that much, really. Age never mattered in Aincrad. She was just as valuable to the front lines as any of the rest of them; she could thrash each of them in a duel, and they all knew it. Besides, by the time SAO was over, there were probably almost a dozen teenagers in the KoB—unsurprising, considering teenagers composed the majority demographic of SAO players, and she was hardly the youngest of them.

Once, some days after she’d been rescued from capture, Godfree had found her sitting alone in the living room late at night, and sat down with her. As she struggled to keep her voice steady past the lump in her throat, he rested one palm on her head and the other on top of her gloved hands and told her gently, a bitter smile on his lips and tired sadness in his bright gold eyes:

_“You’re too young for this.”_

As far as she can remember, that was the only time anyone ever said anything like that to her with that particular inflection. Even she forgot about her age soon enough, probably started forgetting it from the moment her hands were first stained; the blood she spilled became a part of her identity, spreading and spreading its red stain until it blotted out everything else that should’ve mattered.

She and Asuna did get challenged a few times for their age (and likely gender, though only few would say it outright) when they were put in positions of command. But everyone, including Karma herself, soon knew her not for her age, or gender, or anything save for her abilities, and what she did with them.

It makes sense that Godfree, who was a father to a daughter of his own, would remember when no one else did how that castle made soldiers out of children.

Karma doesn’t feel young anymore, but she doesn’t feel older either. She definitely doesn’t feel like she knows what she’s doing with her life, at all.

Aloud, she says, “Don’t worry about it, really. Talking to you guys makes it better.” That, at least, is the truest thing she’s said in...well, probably however long it’s been since she last talked to any of them.

Unfortunately, it still doesn’t eliminate the problem of Kotori.

“Listen,” she says slowly, unsure of how much to say, “do you know of any former orange players in your areas?”

Uneasy surprise and alarm flit across their faces, and Fultz asks quietly, _“Are there any near you?”_

“Yeah, me and a friend were walking home one night and one tried to mug us,” she admits, then grins ruthlessly. “He ran for it once he recognized me.” If only Kotori was that easy to deal with.

Obviously alarmed, Kili tries to force a laugh. _“You do have a particularly terrifying death glare.”_

“Oh, I didn’t even get there. He just straight up ran when I batted my eyes at him.”

_“Can’t imagine why,”_ Sanza remarks in faux sarcasm, pretending to examine his nails.

“Hey-”

_“But I haven’t really heard of anything like that recently,”_ he continues, more seriously. _“It’s always been pretty quiet around here in the first place, though. What about you guys?”_

Fultz scratches the back of his head. _“I mean, I live in a decent part of Tokyo, so it’s usually fine...I can’t say I’ve heard of any criminal activity specifically under the banner of Laughing Coffin or any other SAO orange guilds.”_

Kili, who shivered at the mention of the infamous red guild, nods his head slowly. _“Yeah, I live in an apartment a little off campus...I’ve been kinda swamped with the whole going back to school thing, so I haven’t been paying much attention to the outside world, to be honest...But I think I would’ve heard of it from my roommates.”_

Karma hums to herself, relieved that they’re not dealing with this, at least. They can’t help her from where they are, nor would she ever ask them to, but it goes the other way around; she wouldn’t be able to easily help them either if they needed it, not like she could in Aincrad. Of course, she would find a way to get to them if need be, even if she needed to somehow get all the way to Hokkaido for Uzala, but there’s no way she could ever match the response time she could achieve in Aincrad.

_“Do you think it’s something we should worry about?”_ Fultz asks carefully.

They’re waiting for her to respond, she realizes, and she sighs. “I mean, I exist in a base state of paranoia at pretty much all times, you know that,” she says with a lopsided grin. “So what I think you should or shouldn’t worry about probably isn’t the best metric…” This isn’t Aincrad, where she had to ability to mitigate the things they had to worry about. “And the only way any orange or red player would recognize and target you is by your appearance, and what are the odds, y’know? We look pretty different without armor and gear. But I do carry a small folding knife on me at all times, which is legal if it’s under six centimeters, I think. Just as backup.”

_“It wouldn’t hurt,”_ Sanza admits, sounding thoughtful, and the others make small noises of agreement.

_“I mean, it’s not like I can carry a knife into class every day,”_ Kili adds with a sheepish laugh, _“but yeah, I mean, I do feel really weird still, not being armed all the time…”_

Karma nods along with the others, but a pang of guilt twists in her stomach. On one hand, the thought of them being armed reassures her, if only a little, but on the other, it was supposed to be _her_ job, making sure they didn’t have to worry about the paranoia like she did. She’s helpless, unable to do anything in the real world, not when they’re so far apart.

“Sorry,” she adds apologetically, “I didn’t mean to make this depressing.”

_“Don’t be,”_ Sanza replies immediately. _“It’s worth thinking about.”_

They shouldn’t have to. She hates it. “Yeah...So when’s your first official day?”

For another ten minutes, they chatter away, quickly deviating from the original topic, catching up with each other. It reminds Karma of whenever she would come home from long missions, or back to back ones, and get the chance to simply kick back and spend time talking to the people she loves. It’s no different now _(well, he’s not here, but)_ ; they all live such different lives that there’s no shortage of new things to talk about.

_Gods,_ she misses her little sister.

When she senses someone approaching, she looks up to see Megu trudging back to the stop. Right on cue, the bus approaches, bright headlights glaring, slowed to a crawl by the still falling snow.

“Sorry, gotta go,” she says apologetically; she doesn’t feel like introducing Megu right now. “I’ll catch up later. Congrats again!”

Waving briefly, feeling a bitter fondness at their disappointed goodbyes, she quickly hits the ‘end call’ button. In relative silence, she follows Megu onto the bus.

“I thought I was going to meet your friends,” Megu says as they sit down.

“You said that, not me.”

“You met some of mine.”

“Yeah. They were nice.” They also didn’t talk to her much, probably because of the whole ‘SAO survivor’ thing. She doesn’t remember their names, doesn’t care either.

“It’s okay if you don’t like them,” Megu mumbles, clearly wounded. “You don’t have to like them.”

She sighs shortly; the hornets’ nest is starting to buzz again. “Good. I never felt like I had to.”

Megu shifts in her seat, looking frustrated; it’s scrawled in a mess all over her face. “Do you just not want me to meet your friends?”

No, absolutely not. “You wouldn’t like them.” That much is true, at least. They’re a little too loud, a little too rough around the edges, a little too different and Karma loves them for it, but Megu wouldn’t know how to deal with it. And she loves them, but there’s no way they’d be able to hide who Karma was.

“Well, I feel like I should get to decide that,” Megu replies, trying to force a casual joking tone, and failing. Badly.

Karma just gives her a long look, mildly exasperated. “I haven’t ‘replaced’ you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Megu’s half-startled, half-guilty flinch confirms it.

“Wh-what are you on about?” she protests, forcing a disparaging laugh. “Th-that’s dumb...I’m just…I-I was just curious, that’s all. It’s not like I was…”

_Jealous_ , they both finish in their minds, and Karma blinks slowly as Megu trails off weakly.

“Okay,” she says with a blithe smile, deciding to ignore Megu, whose attempts to lie are like trying to put out a house fire with a beach pail—completely futile.

And it’s true. The KoB are some of the best friends she’ll ever have, but none of them _are_ her best friends; they just don’t fit that definition in her mind. They’re her friends, good friends, but they’re much more than that; they’re family.

And Megu’s still her best friend. It’s just something that she _knows._ The sky is blue, fire is hot, and Megu is her best friend. That hasn’t changed. It can’t change; Karma refuses to let it change, or else what would she have left here?

It’s something she _knows_ , but somehow, all of a sudden—or maybe it’s been a long time coming—it’s no longer something she _feels_.

~~~

_mayday, mayday, the ship is slowly sinking; they think I’m crazy, but they don’t know the feeling -_ My Demons (Starset)

_get up, get out, get away from these liars, ‘cause they don’t get your soul or your fire -_ Open Your Eyes (Snow Patrol)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Karma is starting to develop a bad habit of jumping to conclusions (and she's not exactly wrong a lot of the time). More on that later :D


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The moment we've all been waiting for: Sh*t, this is Fan. Fan, meet Sh*t.
> 
> I've been building up to this for what feels like a really long time, so I'm excited to drop this chapter :D And once again, this chapter was not supposed to be this long, but it's fine :')

_your soul is on fire, a shot in the dark; what did they aim for when they missed your heart? -_ Shot in the Dark (Within Temptation)

~~~

“Guess who I ran into the other day?”

Karma glowers silently as Kotori comes bouncing up to the counter. “What can I get you?” she asks mechanically. Alfheim was too tempting, so she hadn’t been able to convince herself to actually sleep over the weekend.

“The usual!” she chirps, eyes flashing maliciously as she leans on the counter, her lips twisting in an expression of faux pity. “Your best friend doesn’t think you love her anymore.”

Sour frustration swoops in her stomach. Logically, she knows Clover’s likely stretching the truth or even outright lying, but her expression is gleeful, and Karma is pretty sure she at least talked to Megu, whatever Megu said.

Her eyeroll isn’t even that forced. “I have more important things to deal with.”

Kotori makes an interested noise in the back of her throat, her eyes tracking Karma’s every movement. “Oooh, cold,” she giggles. “Things changed, huh? I get that.”

And the sad part is that Kotori probably _does_ get that, far better than Megu does.

At this point in the game, Karma is resigned to an attack. She has no desire to try and talk Kotori out of it anymore, because even if she somehow succeeded, she would always have that tingling paranoia in the back of her mind that she didn’t, and that Kotori is only waiting for her to let her guard down to strike.

Best to just let her have at it, and put her down then, once and for all. But Karma still doesn’t know _when_ it’s going to happen, and frankly, the wait doesn’t get any easier to bear.

“How’s Haruhi doing these days?” she asks mildly, moving to the coffee machine. “She moved away to that new apartment block, didn’t she? It’s closer to her rehab center and all. Must be hard to be so far away from a close friend.”

And Kotori is a good actress, but not quite good enough. “Wh—how-”

The tiny quaver in her voice sparks a dark triumph in Karma. Honestly, it was pure chance that she knew Haruhi had moved; she saw the girl while she was necklace-hunting further from her apartment and decided to tail her on her way back home. Her stealth and stalking abilities were a little limited outside of Aincrad, but she made do.

“She had to use a wheelchair for a week or two after SAO, didn’t she? She doesn’t seem to be doing too bad in rehab though. Good for her. But she should be careful; it’s so easy for accidents to happen when you’re recovering like that.”

The tension is visible in Kotori now, her jaw clenching, breathing quickening, and Karma struggles to hold back a grin. _Good._

“So how are things at the studio?” she continues, taking her sweet time with the drink; normally, she can’t move fast enough to get Kotori out. “You guys are gearing up for the winter season, right? It’s too bad you and Haruhi can’t participate. I’m sure the others can pick up the slack, though. I know Kayoko and Himeko still go there. You’ll have the bars and the beam covered for sure, unless something happened to th-”

Kotori’s voice trembles as she hisses, “Don’t you _dare-”_

“Here!” Karma exclaims, smiling with genuine cheer as she slides the finished drink over. “Hey, you should give me the studio’s schedule for meets. I’ll go cheer them on!”

“You wouldn’t-”

Her smile stays fixed on her face. “Clover,” she purrs, and Kotori’s eyes narrow into chips of ice. “It’s been a long time since I threw you in the Black Iron Palace. You know almost nothing about what I can and can’t do, and I don’t think you have the faintest clue what I would or wouldn’t do. Frankly, you’re really starting to get on my nerves, and I have better things to do with my time than listen to you.”

“Th-they’re innocent. They were your friends-”

“I don’t care,” Karma says bluntly, eyes wide and guileless. “I. Don’t. Care. My life before Aincrad means nothing. _They_ mean nothing. You’re annoying, and I _will_ silence you. And if they happen to get hurt in the crossfire, know that _you_ started it.”

It’s not the first time she’s used this tactic. She used it often enough to prevent or end fights, but she’s never really done it with the express purpose of _starting_ one.

A twinge of guilt pangs in her heart; the other girls _are_ innocent, and they _were_ her friends. Then she brushes the guilt aside; they’re just words. She’s sick and tired of feeling guilty, she doesn’t need more to pile on, and she’ll need all the strength she can get for the upcoming fight, especially now that she’s sped up the clock.

Cross her fingers in the hopes that it works.

~~~

As an afterthought, Karma checks her phone just before playing Alfheim again.

Nothing.

Her heart twists slightly; Megu hasn’t texted her since a few days ago, when Karma had that spontaneous Zoom call with the KoB. It’s probably a good thing, to be honest...If Kotori is really going to make a move soon, likely with Haruhi by her side, Karma doesn’t want Megu anywhere nearby; she’ll probably only get in the way.

Suddenly, her phone buzzes, making her jump. After glancing cautiously at the caller ID, she picks up. “Hey, what’s up?”

Uzala’s familiar voice responds, _“Hey, I didn’t wake you up, did I?”_

“No, you’re fine,” she says with genuine warmth; she can hear it in her voice, and it feels nice to not have to fake it for once. “What is it?”

_“Oh, nothing much. Are you coming to the next Zoom? You never responded about it in the group chat, so I was just wondering.”_

She props her feet up on her desk and sighs. “Um, yeah, probably.” They haven’t had many opportunities to meet up given all the schedules they have to work around, and the last one was nearly as fun as the first, even though she had to whisper and use the chat box the whole time, confined to her room.

_The lock clicked as she shut the door, breathless from having practically jogged all the way back home from the cafe. Half listening to the babble of familiar voices in her ears, she crossed to her window, cracking the curtains open with clammy hands, only to slam them shut again when Kotori beamed up at her from the streets below, waving._

Still, despite various obstacles, she treasures each opportunity; it’s just…

Uzala’s voice crackles through the speaker softly: _“You don’t have to if you don’t want to, you know.”_

“No, of course I want to,” she reassures him firmly, sitting up and putting her feet back down; this, at least, is no lie. “I love seeing all of you. It gives me something to look forward to. It’s just-”

She snaps her mouth shut, but it’s too late.

_“It’s just?”_ he gently prompts, and she can’t help her gaze from wandering to the NerveGear on her shelf before she wrenches it away.

With another quiet sigh, she admits, “It’s just a little lonely. Sorry, I didn’t mean—I meant—it’s stupid-”

_“It’s not stupid,”_ Uzala says quietly, sounding uncharacteristically pensive. _“We all miss them too.”_

But she’s sure they don’t miss _him._

“Yeah,” is all she says out loud, and Uzala heaves an almost dramatically deep sigh; maybe in different circumstances, she would’ve teased him for it, asking jokingly if there was something going through his head for once, then laughing at the expression he would make, but she’s too tired.

_“We’ll figure it out,”_ he says bracingly, and she wishes she felt his conviction. _“And speaking of which...I was thinking of driving up to visit Godfree’s family this week. My computer says it’s a five hour drive, but the weather’s probably gonna screw me over, so I’ll leave early in the morning and probably get there around evening…”_

Past the lead weight suddenly in the pit of her chest again, Karma feigns a gasp. “Wait, _you’re_ actually getting up _early_ for once in your life? Voluntarily?”

_“I’m not that lazy!”_

“You’re totally an imposter. Who are you and what did you do w-”

_“Good night,”_ he declares flatly; she can practically see him sticking his nose up in the air while dramatically marching out of the room (and potentially walking into the wall next to the door instead of the door, which has happened before). _“I’m going to go walk my puppy, because_ he _won’t be mean and sarcastic to me, thank you very much.”_

He hangs up to her laughing at him. With an affectionate snort, she turns her phone off, and her smile fades as she turns to the window.

She’s still confident she can outsmart and outfight Kotori and Haruhi. But it’s never a certain thing; revenge is a heady feeling. She would know.

Is there a way to let the KoB know? Karma will never ask them to fight her fights for her, but she would rather not leave them behind with no explanation. Still, even if she was killed, it’s unlikely that the government would think to inform them, especially not if they aren’t able to figure out who it was.

A pre-scheduled email or message? She has a feeling Kotori will be making her move soon, especially with how she egged her on the other day, but that’s no guarantee. She doesn’t want to worry them if there’s no point; they can’t help her here, and if they don’t have to worry, that’s one less thing for her to think about.

A problem for another time, she decides, exhausted. She checks the lock on her window, checks the front door, and sets the NerveGear on her head to start dreaming.

~~~

Karma is busy locking up the coffee shop when she suddenly notices a figure standing in the shadows at the corner, dark and small and unassuming. Her heart seizes, and her eyes dart side to side, searching for Haruhi as the figure steps into the light-

“What are you looking for?” Megu asks, unimpressed as she walks across the deserted street.

She stares, her heart still drumming frantically in her chest, and she takes a deep breath, forcing her fingers to uncurl from around the grip of her knife. It’s just Megu…so why is she having such a hard time prying her fingers away?

“What are you doing here?” she asks instead, avoiding her gaze. Part of her feels guilty for being so cold recently, and a bigger part of her is too tired for this by this point.

Megu shrugs, feigning a casual air. “Thought I’d surprise you. I’m staying with my parents this weekend, since we have relatives over. Come on, we can walk home together.”

Despite the olive branch, Karma’s too keen eyes notice the details. Megu’s fingers are curled around the strap of her handbag, and she holds herself uncharacteristically still. Usually, she likes fidgeting with something, mostly her phone. She’s still uncomfortable around Karma, and although Karma can’t exactly blame her, it hollows out the hole in her chest.

With a sigh, she opens her mouth to agree-

-and sees a shadow duck around the corner.

Every muscle in her body goes rigid as ice spreads through her veins. Her breath catches in her chest, frozen, as the wind picks up. Snowflakes melt down the back of her neck under her clothes, but she can’t tell if the cold is coming from the storm outside or inside. Numb fingers encased in gloves grip her knife tightly, shaking.

In a split second, she weighs her options.

“Take the bus home!” she shouts over her shoulder as she takes off, sprinting across the street after the shadow.

“Wh—Natsuki!”

Kotori lets her keep catching glimpses of her as she leads her on a goose chase through the streets. Karma knows full well that she’s walking into a trap of some sort, probably with Haruhi helping out. Even in the real world, she’s confident that even the two of them can’t take her out, if for no other reason other than the fact that she’s smarter and a better fighter, but that just means they have something up their sleeves that makes them think they can.

She darts off down a side street, her breathing starting to come in ragged gasps now. Kotori can’t be much better off, which means they have to be nearing some ambush point. Karma forces herself to think this through, to think like _Karma_ would, to think of Kotori and Haruhi as Clover and Lucille, the people who took lives in that death game for their own entertainment.

And she won’t let them take hers.

Before SAO, she never paid attention to this town. She knew where all the best cafes were, and which roads were the busiest, amongst other things that she knew up until they weren’t useful anymore. Ever since she knew that Clover was going to try to kill her one day, she looked up maps. She explored and took long walks under the half-true guise of getting more exercise, memorizing all the back alleys and side streets and suburbs.

If this was her new playing field, then she’d be damned if she didn’t make it hers to master.

She has a pretty good idea of where Clover is trying to take her. There’s a bridge in the middle of town—the seemingly perfect place for two people to corner her, launch a pincer attack, and then, better yet, dump the evidence off the side. For all her talk of revenge and innocent charisma, Clover was never really a subtle thinker. She’s flashy and pretty, like her gymnastics routines, but also ultimately predictable—and foolish, considering exactly who she chose as her target.

Climbing over gates and weaving in and out of alleyways, she quickly shortcuts ahead. Trying to keep her breathing soft, she slows to a walk as she sneaks her way down a narrow side street towards a four-way cross. Before the intersection, she ducks behind a set of trash cans and waits, knowing that Clover will have to pass by this area to get to the bridge, and takes out her phone.

_[Hey, guys...turns out, I brought some ghosts with me from Aincrad…]_

After writing out a short message that she’s been composing in her head for the longest time, she sets it to send after twenty-four hours and taps away at her phone for a few more seconds before slipping the device into her pocket.

The minutes tick by, and she shivers. The wind is blowing from her back, sending snow tumbling down the back of her shirt.

If someone told the Natsuki of two years ago that she would be here—freezing her ass off at near midnight, armed with a folding knife, hiding in a side street behind some trash cans, waiting for an old friend to come walking through so that she can ambush her—she would’ve laughed, creeped out and slightly alarmed, and slammed the door in their face.

If someone told the Karma of not even two months ago that she would be here, she would’ve literally kicked them out the door, slammed it shut after them, and went to laugh with _him_ about how ridiculous it all was.

She realizes suddenly that she can’t feel any more snowflakes falling down the back of her shirt.

Karma whirls around as Clover pounces, sending both of them tumbling to the ground; stars explode in her vision as her head cracks against the ground. She gasps as Clover wraps her hands around her throat and squeezes, black spots erupting in her vision over the sight of Clover with her teeth bared viciously.

The sight of steel raised above her galvanizes her into action. Clover jumps back as Karma slashes at her with her own knife. Before she can run, Karma grabs her by her collar and forces them over, driving a knee into her stomach and grabbing her by the wrists.

“You thought you could ambush me and kill me, just because we’re not in SAO anymore,” Karma hisses in Clover’s face while she writhes, trying in vain to escape; the cold helps to numb the pain in her throat. “But I don’t plan on going down easily any day of the week.”

Clover rears up, trying to headbutt her, but she secures her grip, digging her fingers into her skin as a warning.

“You killed Rie and threw us in prison,” Clover spits out, eyes blazing with unadulterated loathing.

“Your friend and the rest of your guild murdered innocent players,” Karma retorts, starting to sweat with the effort of keeping her pinned down. “And you even planned to continue it in real life with me. Well, guess what, I’m not so easy of a target!”

Clover snarls and throws Karma off in a sudden burst of resistance. A loud _CLANG!_ rings out as Karma’s head hits a trash can. Her shaky vision glimpses a flash of steel, and she yanks a trash can lid up to block a kitchen knife with a horrendous _SCREECH_. In the distance, she can hear sirens approaching, and Clover grins victoriously.

“Are you gonna fight me, then?” Clover taunts, panting too. The two years in SAO didn’t treat her body too kindly either. “Haruhi already called the police while we were setting up. She’s a real great actress, didja know that?”

“You wouldn’t call the police if you wanted to murder me and get away with it,” she says lowly, the trash can lid in one hand and her folding knife in the other like a shield and sword; her stance is impeccable, even if her weapon choice isn’t, after two years of fighting at his side.

She pretends the ache in her throat is only from Clover’s fingers digging into her windpipe a minute ago.

“Oh, we thought about it,” she agrees, stalking closer. “But letting you rot in a jail cell like you did to us seems much more fulfilling!”

Footsteps _tap-tap_ behind Karma on her other side, and she turns to see Lucille, gaunt and thin, walking around the corner, also armed with what looks like a paring knife. She tenses, preparing for either one to attack, and she finally lets herself smile humorlessly.

“So I think now is an appropriate time to let you know that you made one big mistake,” she says lowly, her breathing evening out as she readies herself for a fight. “You _let me know_ that you were going to try and attack me, and I’ve been on my toes ever since. You think I’m not _used_ to people trying to kill me by now?”

She pauses, her fingers searching for her phone, a rush of sheer relief hitting her as she feels the warmth through her pocket. “That and I just happened to record that whole conversation, so actually, good on you for calling the police.” Grinning, she hisses, “They’ll be here soon, and they’ll throw you back in jail where you belong.”

They should’ve kept stalling. If Clover wasn’t so stupid as to panic after just a few threatening words, perhaps Karma would’ve been pushed to move first eventually. But once they attacked, once they lit the match, the game instantly swung into her favor. Clover held the advantage when Karma couldn’t do anything, but this is where Karma’s strength can finally come through.

Justice doesn’t serve the good or the just, nor protect the weak or innocent; it serves whoever is strong enough to be its master, and if it has any loyalty, it can change in an instant.

Clover’s eyes widen as she begins to tremble, and she lunges with a frenzied cry, losing whatever was left of her common sense. Falling back into her combat habits with an ease that surprises even herself, Karma dodges her wild slashes with little difficulty—Clover clearly doesn’t know how to use a knife properly, instead treating it like the longer katana she had in SAO—before slamming the trash can lid into her side.

Dropping the makeshift shield, she quickly grabs Clover’s arm, redirecting her momentum to slam her face-first into a wall. As Lucille rushes in, she grabs Clover by the neck and shoves her into her friend with a grunt, sending both girls sprawling in a heap.

Her lips stretch up in a raw, open grin as adrenaline rushes like cold fire through her veins. The feeling is _achingly_ familiar—the feeling of fighting for her life, and winning. It’s terrifying, exhilarating, and uncontrollably empowering all at once, and she feels as though she can never get enough.

“We should get out of here,” Lucille wheezes, staggering to her feet. Her high-pitched voice cracks with panic. “They’ll be here any second!”

A trickle of blood rolling over her lip from her nose, Clover scoops up her knife, her harsh, ragged breaths gathering in curls and puffs around her face. “If she really recorded the whole thing, we’ll have to kill her first!”

Karma narrows her eyes, setting her feet. Cold, bitter resentment wells up inside of her lungs in a way she’s been trying to push down for weeks, ever since Clover started showing up and pushing and pushing and pushing her, taking away all the places she thought she was safe, taunting and mocking her, the very same resentment she’s been trying to suppress ever since she woke up in the real world and realized he wasn’t here.

It steals her breath away, as well as any mercy she might’ve had once.

“I’m done with this place,” she whispers.

She rolls to the side as Clover brings down the knife in both hands with a shout, and she leaps up onto a dumpster as Clover runs at her, hacking and slashing wildly. Out of the corner of her eye, there’s motion from Lucille, and she jumps; for a second, hanging suspended in the air, she sees the fear in the whites of the other girl’s eyes and feels _invincible-_

As soon as her feet hit the ground, Lucille starts to turn to run—her biggest mistake. Karma’s hand flashes out, grabbing the other girl’s ponytail and yanking hard, and her shriek is cut off as Karma punches her in the face with all the force of her core, shoulder, and arm, as well as the added weight of the knife clenched in her fist, behind the blow. With a _thud,_ she hits the wall and crumples to the ground; Karma barely feels the pain in her hand through the adrenaline.

Clover’s eyes widen as they track her defeated accomplice, and the hesitation costs her. Karma lunges in that instant, batting Clover’s knife arm aside and driving her shoulder against her chest to shove her bodily into the wall. Her head cracks back against the brick, and her knife clatters to the ground.

“You were right,” Karma admits openly between ragged breaths, the cold twisting and seething inside of her, so cold that it burns, searching for fuel to keep itself alive. “I _am_ all alone here.” She folds up her knife deliberately and slips it back into her pocket, her tone indifferent. “You were stupid to come for me if you thought that would make me soft.”

It just makes her weak. And being weak makes her dangerous.

Eyes wild and desperate, Clover springs forward with a hoarse scream, and Karma moves.

_I’ve had enough._

With a sharp twist of her hips, Karma slams the end of her steel-toed boot into the girl’s knee in the split second that Clover’s foot is flat on the ground, sending a sharp _SNAP_ ringing out; taking one step, she grabs Clover’s outstretched hand by the wrist and flips her over her shoulder. In a flash, Clover finds herself airborne; like a natural gymnast, she tries to get her feet underneath her for a landing-

Karma drops to a crouch as her knife flies to her hand; pivoting sharply, she plunges the blade into the back of Clover’s knee. In the space of an instant, she can feel the point of the knife hit bone; the impact reverberates through her hand and arm like striking a bell before she twists the knife and rips the blade down as hard as she can.

The blizzard howls, drowning out Clover’s screams as the whiteout simply swallows them up, cold and uncaring. Breathing out softly, Karma straightens up; for once, she can’t even feel the cold. Absently, she runs the hem of her hoodie along her blade to clean it. Red on red won’t show anyways.

Sirens blare as footsteps draw closer and closer, but she’s quick to act, leaping on top of Clover just as the police round the corner. She muffles her mouth with one hand, holding the knife to her throat with the other in a clear warning sign— _back off._

In their hesitation, she snaps at Lucille, who flinches, “Well?”

Technically, the voice recording should still be going, and Clover had been kind enough to say exactly what Karma needed her to say, but having it come straight from Lucille would make her case much more convincing.

They bark at her to let Clover go, but Karma has no intention of complying until she gets the truth out of Lucille. The other girl trembles—from fear or cold or both, Karma can’t tell, nor does she care.

“D-don’t hurt her, p-please-”

“The truth first, then,” she interrupts coldly. “Tell them how you tricked them to set me up. Tell them how _she-”_ She gives Clover’s head a little shake, numb fingers digging into Clover’s face. “-stalked me at my job, followed me home, and threatened me for _weeks_.” Fury seeps into her voice for one uncontrollable moment. “Tell them why you did it.”

She could never kill Clover and get away with it in front of law enforcement, and nor would she (at least, she doesn’t think she would), but she knows Lucille will forever remember watching Rie burst into pixels before her eyes. And she knows Lucille doesn’t know that Karma can’t and won’t kill her friend; all she knows is that Karma has done it before.

And the truth spills from her lips in heaving cries of guilt, and only when the fear has eked out every last word of confession does Karma step away from Clover, satisfied. Lucille falls to the ground to her knees in the snow stained red at her friend’s side, sobbing; Karma doesn’t spare them another glance as she lets herself be led away.

Clover doesn’t bleed to death, but she will never run or somersault on the tumbling floor ever again.

_Good._

~~~

Between the phone recording and Lucille’s confession, Karma didn’t really have much else to say other than confirm what happened. After verifying the truth about the three girls’ history in SAO and a long back and forth, they couldn’t contest the fact that not only did the two orange players lie to law enforcement, but also that Karma was not the initial aggressor and never was. Lucille backed it all up, having given up entirely after her first admission.

Maybe she was suspiciously prepared, but it’s not illegal to carry a knife as small as hers. Clover was the one who pulled a knife on her first anyways; she was only acting in self defense with a tool she happened to have at hand.

The damage Karma did to Clover was a point of contention, but she simply protested that she spent two years on the front lines in SAO and reacted accordingly to a situation in which her life was supposedly in danger. As for holding Clover hostage, well, she was never going to seriously injure her again, but she was banking on Lucille’s emotionality getting the better of her, and the important thing is that Lucille confessed.

When they demanded why she didn’t report it when Clover first approached her, she just fed them a half-truth about how she didn’t think they would ever take a former SAO player seriously, which they wouldn’t have, and how she thought she could handle it herself, which she did. It’s not even a lie, and it’s not like they can prove anything without getting into her mind—and her mind is the last sanctuary she has. The walls have been crumbling, and though she doesn’t have the resources to fix it, she has the desperation to defend it to her last breath.

She stretches her arms above her head in exhaustion as she’s escorted out and rubs her sore throat idly. Aside from that and her sprained fingers (now in a brace) from when she punched Lucille, she walked away with barely a scratch otherwise—all in all, not a bad turnout, considering the original aim of the attack.

She didn’t get a chance to ask what will happen to Clover and Lucille, but what matters is that they won’t even think about coming near her again.

One problem down. The others aren’t ones that she can fight, but Clover is now out of the picture. She assumes she’ll have to answer some more questions later, and she heard them talking about more therapy, but those are minor nuisances she can handle with ease.

Truth be told, Clover was never really a _threat_ in the literal sense of the word.Karma always knew there was a good chance that she could handle her and probably Lucille in a fight, but the psychological wear and tear of _waiting_ for it was starting to get to her. She can take this one step at a time now.

The sight waiting for her in the lobby stops her dead in her tracks. “What are you doing here?”

Her parents gasp, and Karma takes a bewildered step back, hackles rising instinctively, but her mother doesn’t seem to notice and just throws her arms around her anyway, seemingly blind to the way Karma stiffens like a board, suffocating.

“Oh, sweetheart, we were so worried—we got a call saying you were at the _police station_ , you got _attacked-”_ She pulls back, hands cradling Karma’s face, turning it this way and that, as if any injuries she might’ve received would be on her face. “Are you hurt? Are you—did he-”

“I’m _fine,”_ she says firmly, grasping her mother’s hands and lowering them.

“Your hand-”

“I did that to myself. They barely touched me.”

_“They?”_

“Your daughter is perfectly fine,” the police officer escorting her assures her parents curtly, darting nervous glances at Karma, who barely pushes down the urge to roll her eyes. It’s funny, especially when her parents are too busy to even notice. They never noticed Kotori’s intentions either, though, so she can’t be surprised.

Her father turns to the officer, as if Karma isn’t standing right here.

“What happened? How did our daughter get into this? Who-”

“Let’s just go home already,” Karma interrupts, letting a hint of a (not at all fake) whine enter her voice. “I’m really tired. I’ll tell you about it later.” If only because she knows there’s no way to keep it from them indefinitely, and no matter what they end up believing, her version of the story—the truth, albeit doctored—can at least be the first one they hear.

“Oh, honey, you don’t have to,” her mother frets, smoothing down her hair despite her trying to edge away, so uncomfortable—all this attention now, when the problem was _right under their noses_ for _weeks_. “It must’ve been a terrible experience; I know you must’ve been so scared-”

Karma pastes a blank smile on to draw their attention away from the stiff set of her shoulders, because she’s _so tired_ of all of this.

_What do you know?_

There is no in between. The people who know what she is think she’s one thread away from snapping. The people who don’t know assume they know her demons; they assume everything to fit their expectations.

She knows they’re worried. And honestly, she doesn’t blame them. And she feels guilty for it, but there’s nothing she can do about it that won’t make it worse except keep pretending. There were people who worried about her in SAO too, weren’t there? But they didn’t just _assume;_ they didn’t try to force her into a box that looked like what they wanted to see. They saw her at face value.

They never pressed for details when she didn’t want them to, but nor would they shy away from the truth if she were to tell them. They worried, but they never tried to pretend like she wasn’t strong. They never laughed when she said that she was.

And when she believed she was weak, someone was there to believe that she was strong, so _where is he now?_

She wants that back, she wants _him_ back, she wants to _go home._

~~~

Regretfully, Karma places the NerveGear back on the shelf for the night. She wouldn’t put it past her parents for one of them to try and check on her in the morning, and they would only get suspicious if they encountered a locked door and no response. She doubts they’re asleep either, so she can’t even get herself some coffee to tide her over through the few hours left until morning.

She’s exhausted—physically and mentally. Her mind is just as out of shape as her body; both have gotten rusty and complacent in the absence of the high stakes SAO enforced. In Aincrad, her fight or flight response was invoked at least once a day, so she just got used to it, eventually. The adrenaline rush never completely overpowered her like it did tonight, nor did it leave her feeling so _empty_ after it swept away, and the exhaustion has seeped into her bones, settling there like an infection.

She’s in the middle of reading _Wuthering Heights_ again, since she’s in no mood to sleep, her eyes feeling as though they’re weighted with lead, when her phone buzzes.

Karma jumps, but it’s only Uzala, texting in the group chat. Her lips quirk briefly at the selfie he sent of himself and some girl he apparently met at the club.

_[Cute. I give it a week_ :3 _]_ she snarks; immediately, Kili responds with a chain of ROFL’s and a thumbs up on her message.

Uzala is quick to react.

_[Rude!!!_ T.T _And why are you guys awake anyways?!]_

_[Y’know, I would say college students are nocturnal animals, but that implies we sleep during the day,]_ is Kili’s response.

Suddenly, Karma remembers the message she wrote them that was going to send by itself if Clover did succeed in killing her. She quickly deletes it, breathing out quietly. Deleting it makes it feel more real somehow, that she really did win.

_I won, didn’t I?_

For two years, she has hesitated to call any PvP fight a win, not unless she actually accomplished her task without having to take a life. It was those times when she could feel triumphant in returning home, knowing that just this time, she could go home and share in her friends’ relief that she was back safe and she wouldn’t have to act like she wasn’t disgusted with herself for still being alive.

“I won,” she whispers, staring at her reflection in the dark window; for the first time in weeks, she can look outside without having to worry that Clover’s face will be waiting for her below. “I won.”

She doesn’t feel like she won.

A headache begins to throb, and she presses her hand to her head, digging the heel into her temple, squeezing her eyes shut.

“I _won,”_ she tells herself again. “I’m alive, they’re alive, and they’ll never, _n-never_ come near me again-”

But the price she made them pay-

They should’ve expected it. They should’ve been prepared for it. They shouldn’t have tried in the first place. It was just self-defense.

Breathing hard now, she snatches her phone up; it takes her several tries, between her trembling fingers and the blurriness pooling in her vision.

_[Am I a good person?]_

On the top of the screen, the ‘Uzala is typing’ indicator stops for a few seconds, during which her heartbeat roars in her ears like a war drum, before resuming.

_[Yes.]_ Then: _[Nightmare? You okay?]_

_I wish._

At the same time, Kili asks, _[Are you okay?]_ A second later: _[Oh, and yes, btw.]_

_[Do you want one of us to call you?]_ Uzala suggests, so quick to extend a hand.

Tears _drip drip_ onto the screen, warm and wet, like blood-

_[What if I hurt someone on purpose?]_

Uzala’s reply is almost immediate.

_[Karma, what happened? Are you hurt?]_

Her phone drops to the table as she buries her face in her hands with a sob.

Hands that did not kill tonight.

Hands that remember the feeling of tearing flesh and muscle, of crippling a teenage girl badly enough that she will never again be able to do what she loves-

“I didn’t mean to,” she chokes out, but that’s a lie, that’s such a lie, _she meant it,_ she meant all of it; she meant the damage that she wanted to cause.

_I only ever wanted to protect them._

Everything she did, every life she took, she did it to protect someone. Once, the only life she was defending was her own, but even then, defense was her priority; it was _never_ about spite or revenge.

They’ve always been quick to point it out. Whenever she questioned if she was truly all that different from the monsters she tried to subdue, they reminded her of what was important, that she fought not to destroy, but to preserve.

“I’m sorry,” she sobs; the last thing she ever wanted was to become the thing she tried to protect them from for two years; did all that time mean _nothing-_

_“You can deny it all you want, but you know that you’re just like us...It’s a pity you won’t join us. You would feel right at home.”_

When PoH said those words to her almost a year ago, at the time, she felt only indignant, righteous rage, brazenly confident in herself and her own resolve and purpose. At the time, she knew what she was fighting for. At the time, his words only inspired her to fight harder, determined to never become the monster that he was proud of being.

At the time, she never thought she would one day prove him right.

Karma realizes that Clover didn’t succeed in killing her or even injuring her, and she didn’t even have to in order for Karma to lose.

~~~

_I tried so hard, thought I could do this on my own; I’ve lost so much along the way -_ Pieces (Red)

_you used to captivate me by your resonating light; now I'm bound by the life you left behind_ \- My Immortal (Evanescence)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Clover, did you really think that pushing her so much would work? You definitely weren't there the last time Karma lost it...
> 
> So I really wanted to show how prone to weakness Karma actually is, especially without Heathcliff and Asuna to ground her. That's why I included the first part. Who knows if she would've actually harmed Clover's (and her own former) friends, since they ended up just being words, unlike what she did to Clover. As she said, she doesn't take kindly to being pushed, and she hasn't got anyone to catch her anymore (partially her fault). She spent so long being trapped in her helplessness and paranoia before Clover, who seriously miscalculated, gave her the freedom to lash out all she wanted. She wouldn't (and couldn't) have gone so far in SAO, but Heathcliff's betrayal destabilized her in more ways than one. Afterwards, she regretted it immensely, but in the moment, her spite refused to stop at simply fending off danger; instead, she left Clover with a likely permanent, crippling injury for really no reason other than the fact that she wanted revenge.
> 
> And initially, I was just going to end the chapter with her resentment towards her parents, but then I thought about the KoB, which is how this ended up being like a thousand words longer than the rough draft :D I don't think any of them would just outright turn their backs on her (nor am I nearly cruel enough to make that happen XD), but I did want them to somehow factor into her growing feelings of guilt and self-loathing.
> 
> As I said, we're having so much fun here :D
> 
> (And I don't really know how law enforcement would've handled that realistically, but it's fine, I'll just claim artistic liberty :'P)
> 
> Still, enemies trying to kill her, she can handle, even without Heathcliff; it was never really about her actual ability to handle the threat to begin with anyways. She hasn't quite snapped. And now that Clover and Lucille are gone, everything should go back to normal, right?


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If she looks them in the eye and shows the broken things inside, will they run away?
> 
> Karma's bitter. Also, remember what I said about her developing a bad habit of jumping to conclusions?
> 
> (On a somewhat related note, Sh*t and Fan are getting to know each other real well, huh.)
> 
> Side note, I meant to post this chapter sooner XD School got in the way T.T I never have time to edit when I want time, and I always have time when I don't feel like editing XD
> 
> And wow, I just realized I've been working on this for over a year now! :D I posted the first chapter of Retribution in April 2020, but I've had this idea of Karma and I've been working on it since last January (I think even before that, actually, when this whole fic was just a few bullet points in my notebook that I jotted down when I probably should've been paying attention in class :P), so this is super cool :)
> 
> (On the other hand, _holy crap_ it's already been that long where does the time _go_ O.o)

_if I looked you in the eye and showed the broken things inside, would you run away?_ \- Lonely (Nathan Wagner)

~~~

“Looks like everyone’s getting into gear for Christmas, huh?” Karma points out cheerfully, looking around at all the decorations.

She knew something was up when Megu invited her out for tea and coffee out of nowhere, because they haven’t really talked in what can be considered a while for them. Still, she had a feeling it might be suspicious if she declined, and she would rather have Megu acting suspicious where Karma can see her.

The question _what is wrong with me_ just keeps playing on a loop constantly in the back of her head these days. She’s learned to drown it out.

_“Your best friend doesn’t think you love her anymore.”_

It’s fine. It’s...fine. Clover was probably bending the truth anyways, right?

Megu just ‘hmm’s in response, deep in thought, and Karma drags her back before she can walk into traffic.

“Jeez, now who’s the airheaded one?” she remarks dryly, and gestures with one hand at Megu’s beanie. “Is that hat making your hearing as bad as your eyeballs?” She never wears a hat for that reason. Even though it realistically doesn’t impact her hearing much, she always feels like it does, and it makes her uneasy. It’s a similar reason to why she hates scarves; no matter how she tries to ignore it, she can never stop thinking about how they feel like hands lightly wrapped around her neck.

_What’s wrong with me what’s wrong with me what’s-_

Megu half-heartedly swats her hand away and readjusts her glasses. “Let’s just hurry up. It’s cold out,” she says with none of her usual bite.

Karma has a feeling she’s not going to enjoy whatever today is going to be like.

They get their drinks at their favorite shop and sit down. Karma keeps scanning the streets repeatedly; it’s more out of habit now than anything. The paranoia is even more exhausting than it was before, now that she doesn’t even know what she’s looking for anymore, but she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to stop.

If this is what the rest of her life is going to be like, she doesn’t even want to think about it.

Megu, who usually can’t wait for a chance to rant or gossip, gives one sentence responses each time Karma tries to make small talk about her classes or her roommate’s love pentagon or whatever it is. The silence stretches out between them uncomfortably, and Karma stifles a sigh; her coffee is starting to get lukewarm. At this point in her ‘therapy’, she’d be getting impatient, but still more than willing to let the silence drag on. Doing this with Megu is just weird, though.

“What?” she finally asks bluntly, making the other girl jump. “You have something to confront me on, so just get on with it, will you?” Probably not the best start, but, well, the ball’s rolling now.

Megu hasn’t even touched her tea. “I-I’m not going to _confront_ you.”

“Confront, interrogate, whatever. I’m here, aren’t I?” she asks, tipping her head back to drain the last of her coffee.

The other girl huffs quietly and adjusts her glasses; she’s annoyed, and it shows.

“Look,” she says, clearly forcing a conciliatory tone, which is honestly more irritating than if she was simply open, “I get that you’re under a lot of stress-”

“Who told you that?” Karma asks sardonically. “‘Cause I know you didn’t figure it out yourself. Spit it out, Megu.”

“Fine,” she bites out, clearly making an effort to restrain herself. “Your parents told me what happened last night.”

Realization dawns on her, and she rolls her eyes in a long-suffering manner, irritated that her coffee is all gone now. “And they think I’m still traumatized from it even though I’ve told them I’m fine, so they want you to try and make me ‘better’?”

It shouldn't be a surprise at this point, that they trust Megu enough to go behind Karma’s back and give her this information, but they don’t trust their own daughter enough to just leave well enough alone when she says so.

_I see how it is._

Megu opens her mouth indignantly to deny it, then hesitates. “Th-that’s not-”

Karma raises her eyebrows, unsurprised. “Yeah, I thought so. Never mind the fact that me _and_ the police told them not to go spreading it around…”

“You're acting too normal about this!” Megu protests, as if she knows anything about ‘properly’ reacting to threats upon one’s life.

“I'm sorry, would you like me to burst into tears hysterically every half hour or so?” Karma asks sarcastically, feeling a vaguely amused smirk tug at her lips. “Or would a different schedule work better for you?” Out of necessity, she’s not a terrible actress, but even she can’t cry on command.

It would probably make them feel better if they thought they could ‘comfort her’ or something, but she's far past caring about how they feel about this whole situation when they _didn't_ care for weeks. It was always her problem, not theirs, so why not leave it at that? They didn’t _want_ a problem, so they refused to see one, and now that she’s taken care of it herself, suddenly they want to help?

The small rational part of her that’s left _begs_ her to just stop and think, but she drowns the voice out; it doesn’t feel right but it feels better, having someone other than herself to blame.

“What— _no,_ I just-” Megu huffs in frustration, looking away. “Someone tried to kill you! You’re not taking this seriously enough.”

Karma almost wants to laugh. As if Megu has any right to tell her how to feel.

“I've taken it more seriously than you have,” she retorts levelly. “And don’t tell me that you would’ve believed me for a second if I tried to tell you.”

“You could’ve told me what you were doing when you ran off that night. I could’ve helped-”

“You’ve never seen a fight in your life.”

“I-I could’ve called the police.”

It’s getting harder and harder to keep the irritation out of her voice and expression. “They already did that. Tried to frame me and everything. Look, I’m just fine, so just drop it, will you?”

Megu has always liked to stick her nose into everything; it was usually useful and amusing because she could never keep her mouth shut about the most interesting new gossip going around their high school. Now it’s just annoying, and costs more energy to deal with than Karma cares to expend.

“We’re worried about you,” Megu says plaintively, and past the irritation starting to match Karma’s, she sees, of all things, _pity._

It makes her _furious_.

And deep inside, past the anger, some part of her _laughs,_ because yeah, at this point, maybe she _is_ someone to be looked down upon, especially after what she did to Clover, and from within the bottomless pit she’s fallen so far into, she’ll be the first to admit it. But right now, none of it matters, because _what gives Megu the right-_

“It’s not your place to worry about me,” she says, not caring how cold it sounds anymore. “There’s nothing you can do-”

“So there _is_ something-”

“It’s none of your business,” she continues sharply, and her voice unconsciously pitches into the dangerous tone she used in Aincrad to get what she wanted, making Megu flinch; at this point, if it makes her leave Karma alone, she’ll take it.

Megu opens and closes her mouth several times; her voice is weak as she puts up a flimsy argument.

“I’m your best friend,” she mumbles at her drink. “We told each other everything.”

“Yeah, well, that was two years ago.”

“I-I tell you everything,” she protests, sounding betrayed, and Karma snorts quietly. What does Megu know about being stabbed in the back?

“Right,” she says flatly, “because I definitely wanted to know all about your roommate’s love pentagon or whatever. I’m not obliged to give you every detail on my life, especially when I never asked that of you.”

Megu shrinks further into her coat. “You know you can still tell me anything-”

“I don’t want to,” she says, short and curt. “You’re pushing me because you think it’s the right thing to do, but you’re not doing anyone a favor except yourself.”

Her eyes flash indignantly. “I-I’m not—why would you say—we’re just trying to help!”

“It’s not your business,” she repeats deliberately, wishing Megu, who can soak up new information like a sponge on her first time hearing it and memorize hundreds of digits of pi, who is the most book smart person Karma knows, would just _listen_ , wishing Megu, who’s used to being right about everything, would just accept that she can in fact be _dead wrong_ for once in her life. “And it’s not theirs either.”

“They’re your parents…”

They’re not him; no one ever will be him.

And if they won't trust her, then they have no right to be surprised when she acts in kind.

Ignoring Megu, she forces a conversational tone. “I’m glad it happened, actually. She’s been threatening me for weeks. Now it’s over, and I walked away with this-” She waves her hand in a brace. “-and hardly anything else, and they’re in jail. Happy endings all around. Well, except for them, but they deserved it.”

Whether or not Clover deserved everything she got is irrelevant. It does not matter.

_I don’t care. I_ don’t _care._

Megu gapes at her. “Weeks?”

“Oh, my parents didn’t tell you about that?” she snaps, not caring how cutting her tone is. “Funny, considering they told you about literally everything else they were told not to. Guess they didn’t want to look worse than they already do, but as they say, truth will out.”

Her voice cracks briefly on the last word, but Megu doesn’t seem to notice.

“What are you-”

“Did you think Kotori just snapped out of nowhere?” she asks sarcastically. “It doesn’t work like it does in bad thriller movies, you know. Aren’t you taking some sort of basic psych class? People don’t just go insane and try and kill someone for no reason. Most murder victims are people that the killer knew personally in some way, actually.”

“But—she—I’ve talked to her-”

“I _know.”_ She rolls her eyes with a little curl of her lip. “She told me about it every chance she got. At first, I thought she was just lying to get under my skin, but no. None of you ever even stopped to think once about it, let alone twice—she played you all like fools, and you wonder why I didn’t tell you.” Come to think of it, her parents’ attempts to ‘fix’ things, to fix her, are probably just them trying to make up for their blatant blindness.

_I know I’m broken,_ she wants to scream. But he always let her _choose_ to let him close to help her, embracing her and the blood on her hands, and she’s sick and tired of people trying to force their way in when they’ll only abandon her at the first sight of red.

“But—but that’s crazy,” Megu splutters, hands waving a little as if she can pull the answers from the air—not that she _has_ to; Karma is _telling_ her all the answers, and she just won’t believe them.

“And the idea that someone locked ten thousand people inside a video game for two years and killed four thousand of them is also crazy, but it still happened,” Karma agrees flatly, but all she’s been thinking about is how crazy that all along it was _him-_

“Why didn’t you say anything?” she asks, looking so pitifully wounded.

Karma struggles to keep a sneer from twisting her face. “As if you would’ve believed me.” She stands up. “I’m getting more coffee. I think I’ll need it.”

She returns with a steaming cup, and Megu immediately jumps right back in.

“But why would she want to k-kill you? Did something happen in SAO? You—you met each other in SAO, didn’t you?”

At least Karma doesn’t have to explain every little thing. “Yeah. She and Haruhi were both part of a player-killer guild.”

“But—y-you said you never saw each other, and she never mentioned-”

Karma lets out an explosive sigh. “Leave it to you to focus on the fact that I lied to you rather than how they murdered innocent people,” she mutters, and Megu swallows visibly, her gaze drifting away as she shifts guiltily.

“W-well, I was just...So—you were one of the players she attacked?” she finally asks, wringing her hands together uncomfortably. “Was—was that how he died?”

With a _colossal_ effort, Karma restrains herself from dumping her coffee over herself or over Megu (if only for the fact that it would be a waste of good coffee). Is it really _that_ hard to believe that she was anything but a victim in SAO?

“How about we go somewhere else?” she suggests. “In case you lose it and start yelling.” Or in case Karma herself loses it, which is a very real possibility at the rate this is going.

When they reach a public park, full of kids screaming and throwing snowballs in the background, Karma finally resumes talking. It’s the same park that they went to after visiting her ex’s grave, which, in hindsight, probably doesn’t bode well.

“I wasn’t one of the players she attacked,” she says evenly. “And it was months after he was killed. I was the one that sent them all to jail.”

At least Megu doesn’t laugh.

“Wait...S-so...you were…”

“A fighter? Yeah, I was,” she agrees, keeping a flat, steady tone. “Front lines, highest levelled player in the game.”

“And,” Megu manages, her expression slack and gormless, “that’s why she wanted to kill you? Because you put her and her friends in jail?”

Well… “Pretty much.”

Megu blinks. “...Oh,” she says faintly, clutching the ends of her scarf.

And suddenly, Karma is seized with an indescribable urge to look her in the eye, and just tell the ugly, bloody truth for once.

_Let’s see what’ll happen_ , she thinks distantly to herself, opening her mouth. _Let’s see if she still accepts me._

Karma can’t bring herself to care anymore about the consequences.

_“I just...wanted to feel something again.”_

Is this how he felt like, once upon a time? Completely and totally unable to give a damn about the world that didn’t want him?

She thinks she’s finally starting to understand, a little at a time.

“Actually, I killed her friend in the fight and threatened some of the other girls from the studio, so that probably has something to do with it,” she adds, casually dropping that bomb.

If this was anything else, she would’ve burst out laughing at the way Megu’s eyes go _so_ wide. But she doesn’t tend to laugh about murder, and she doesn’t think she has _really_ laughed since she left Aincrad (if she has, she can’t remember what it feels like), so she stays silent, and waits for judgement.

“Y-you...you…” Megu stutters helplessly. “Y-you’re joking, right?”

The truth doesn’t feel as liberating as she thought it might, and Karma sighs. God, she’s so tired. “I really wish I was.”

“B-but...I-I don’t get it…”

“Come on, I thought you were the smart one between the two of us. What part of that do you not get?” she asks, plain and simple, and Megu throws her hands up in the air with a little high-pitched noise.

“I don’t know! None of it! All of it!” She buries her face in her hands briefly before tearing them away with a groan. “You—I never—I-I thought you were-”

“‘Better?’” Karma finishes quietly for her, stepping closer with a slight tilt of her head; at this point, it hurts, but she is thoroughly unsurprised when Megu steps back, pale and frightened. Shows how much she knows—Karma would never raise a hand to her but apparently that doesn’t even matter.

_You don’t get to judge me._

So knowing that, why does it _still hurt?_

This is what she hates so much about the real world, this feeling. And it’s not even really the shame or the guilt or the fear or any of that, because none of that is unfamiliar. She can’t remember what it feels like to not be constantly plagued by guilt—in her waking hours, in her dreams, in the forefront of her mind as she tries to struggle through the days or as a tiny background thought shadowing every step she takes. Her heart is still beating because others aren’t and it’s her fault, and every day she wakes up to see the sun is another reminder.

And plenty of people, more than she cares to count, have tried to get inside her head, to make her a victim of her own demons—including ones that were supposed to be on the same side as her. They’ve told her that she’s a terrible person for what she’s done, that she had no right to make the choices she’s had to make—fine. They have no right to judge her, but fine; it’s all more or less true anyways.

_(She never thought it would come from someone she thought was, at the very least, an ally, but it’s fine.)_

And it didn’t matter in the first place; she knew she was never proud of herself for the terrible things she did and hoped she never would be _(so much for that)_ , but it was okay; _someone_ always was (and in hindsight, maybe that wasn’t a good thing, but she didn’t think to care then). Besides him, the only thing that saved her was the fact that _you think I don’t already know that I’m a monster?_

No, what’s different is the resentment, born of nothing but selfishness and for once directed outward instead of inward, and it’s the kind that runs deeper than a simple clash of morals or goals. Even in Aincrad, she never truly resented anyone for her own sake, and never anyone that she didn’t know personally—she couldn’t, _because_ she didn’t know them.

Malice is an ugly feeling, one that she unfortunately knows. It should be a blaring alarm to her, and she should know better by now than to let her heart lead instead of her head, but she suspects it’s too late and has been for a while now.

“I did what I had to do to survive,” she states, meeting Megu’s stricken gaze squarely. “To keep other people I cared about safe. I know it comes as a surprise to you that I was not in fact _helpless_ and _weak_ , but I _thrived,_ and you just have to accept that-”

“Don’t you feel _guilty_ for it?” Megu demands indignantly, and that is like fireworks right in Karma’s face; the sheer _audacity_ of that question stuns her so much that she can’t even respond before Megu is talking again, her voice growing and growing in volume.

“I just—you talk about things like they don’t even bother you! Him dying, you threatening and _killing_ people, why would you—how can you think this is okay?!”

Blood roaring in her ears, Karma opens her mouth to say that _no,_ it’s not okay! She is not okay, and she hasn’t been ever since she lost the person that mattered most to her, was everything to her, and with him, almost all of herself.

She wants to say that _yes,_ she feels _so guilty_ for all of the blood on her hands. That she can’t even sleep anymore because the nightmares got so bad, that it _does_ bother her; the fact that she’s alive because they’re not bothers her, it bothers her every second of every minute of every hour of every day-

And then she realizes that it doesn’t even matter.

No one is going to listen when she talks. They will always condemn her without even bothering to learn a thing as soon as they see the red on her hands.

So she’s going to go somewhere where someone _will_ listen.

And she’s going to stay there.

Her voice is perfectly still and flat, devoid of emotion, as she puts on that blank mask again and says, “There is no such thing as black and white,” before she turns on her heel and walks away.

~~~

As her bedroom door gently _clicks_ shut behind her, Karma wants to scream, to hit something, to hurt something, anything-

But she’s so tired.

Sinking bonelessly to the floor with her back to the wall, she fumbles to pull out her phone.

No new missed messages. It feels hard to breathe; the air weighs heavy in her lungs like poison.

Suddenly, her phone buzzes in her hand; the caller ID reads Uzala. Her thumb hovers over the ‘accept call’ as she trembles; every beat of her heart aches to hear the voice of someone familiar, someone safe-

_“Don’t you feel_ guilty _for it?”_

With a flick of her wrist, the phone whizzes across the wooden floor like a hockey puck; it flies under the bed, striking the wall with a muffled, disjointed _crack_ and falling silent. She trusted _him_ with her secrets and he used them as a knife to put in her back; she tried to trust Megu with them _twice_ and both times, she rejected them without a second thought.

They’ve always told her she was a good person, but they don’t know what she willfully did to Clover. They’ll ask what’s wrong, so concerned for her well-being, and she wouldn’t be able to bear keeping it a secret; she can’t— _won’t_ risk it again. She’s made the same mistake too many times already.

Karma misses hearing her voice of reason, but the paranoia has burrowed deep like a parasite, drowning the voice out with its own, ever since she left the virtual world; she can’t hear anything but the paranoia anymore.

“Make it stop,” she begs, but what’s the point? No one’s ever going to get close enough to try, and he’s the only one who could ever get inside her head; there’s no one else who _can_ make it stop except the person it all started with.

The room is growing darker. She still can’t breathe, but she doesn’t mind. This world is killing her more than the other one ever did, simply for the fact that she cannot find the desire to live here. Why did he think she could live here?

“I thought things were supposed to be _better,”_ she snarls in anguish. “Everyone says things are better, r-right?”

_But then, why did she think she could trust them when she couldn’t trust him?_

Her hand drifts to her sternum by habit, clutching at the tiny piece of metal that should be there-

Except it _isn’t_ , and she pulls hard at one of her braids instead, squeezing her eyes shut, breathing hard. Trembling, she stumbles to her desk, reaching for her chair and nearly falling when it rolls away from her, and she clutches at the edge of the desk; the floor tilts under her feet as she realizes the harsh, ragged noise she’s hearing is her own breathing; her lungs that never needed oxygen in the virtual world are rebelling.

Her shaking hands encounter the hardback copy of _Wuthering Heights_ on her desk, and she drags it close as she falls to her knees, holding the book to her chest like a toddler would a teddy bear after waking up from a bad dream.

Because that’s all this is now. Just a bad dream. She’ll wake up from it soon.

She has to wake up from it soon.

_This isn’t living._

“Heathcliff,” she sobs. Her back hits the side of her bed.

_Why did I think I could do this without you?_

The things she thought he could never take from her—her friends, her family, her morality—he _didn’t_ take them, but somehow, they’ve slipped away from her out of her reach anyways. From the moment he left her behind, everything that made her strong became another knife to cut her down instead—Asuna is a world away and her absence bleeds, she doesn’t think she can bear to look any of the KoB in the eye, Megu is disgusted by her and her parents would be too if they knew. Just like how every rumor grows from fact, there’s a grain of truth in their ignorant judgement, and she wishes the part of her that still cares would just die already.

At least in Aincrad, she was a monster but she could _use that_ to defend her family, but here, there’s no one to protect and no one who would want her protection if they knew the truth. She wouldn’t even trust herself with anyone she cares about anymore, now that she’s seen for herself the kind of depths she’s capable of sinking to.

Is this what she becomes without him? A mess, doomed to fail as her strengths become useless burdens, or worse, crippling weaknesses? Would it have been better, if she had nothing before, so that she would have had nothing to lose, nothing that could turn against her like he did?

But then she would’ve just been like him instead, so unalive that nothing could touch him, not pain nor love; she doesn’t want to live like that either.

“I don’t know what to do,” she pleads.

Asuna would know what to do, wouldn’t she? She was always the smarter one, the one with clearer vision and an even clearer conscience. When Karma’s battle-worn cynicism and his cool logic, tarnished copper and rusted steel, couldn’t protect her, it was Asuna’s golden heart that found a way.

But she’s so far away, in a place Karma would go to in an instant if only she had directions and a destination.

There’s no end in sight, no way to know when Asuna will come back, and-

And Karma’s done waiting. She’s always been the hunter, the survivor, and she went out and fought for those things, and she’s done waiting for something so nebulous as hope to appear, for salvation to fall into her hands; it’s not going to happen here.

Grasping a fistful of the sheets, she pulls herself up onto her bed, reaching for the shelf. Without error, her hands find the pockmarked surface of the NerveGear, and her tears trace their way down the surface, seeping into the cracks and dents along the way. She pulls it close, curling her body around it in an attempt to fill the hole in her heart.

_Where someone will listen…_

She knows a place.

In the back of her head, she realizes she’d forgotten what hope felt like. Or perhaps what she’s feeling is desperation, but right now, they might as well be one and the same. It doesn’t matter anymore. It doesn’t have to matter anymore.

It’s so simple. It wouldn’t have mattered whether or not Clover tried to murder her. It wouldn’t have mattered whether or not Megu stood by her or left her. It wouldn’t have mattered whether or not she had a future here, wouldn’t have mattered how much she loved or hated the real world. It wouldn’t have mattered whether or not she had the KoB, or how far away Asuna was.

At the end of the day, even Asuna will never be able to replace him.

Breathing out one last time, expelling the real oxygen in her lungs, she rests her forehead against that of the device.

She can do it. With two words, she’ll be there.

She’ll wake up from this nightmare, and she’ll be alive again.

_“Link start.”_

It’s not even a question.

_I’m coming home._

~~~

By some coincidence, Eugene bumps into her in the market. “Catherine.” He tried calling her Cathy once as a joke, but she’d corrected him very vehemently, stating that they were two very different people. He had no idea what that meant and just dropped it.

She glances up from where she’s inspecting a weapons merchant’s stock and blinks up at him. “Hey, General.” Her eyes look glassy, yet also too bright, and he finds her gaze disconcerting. It has to be a trick of the light.

He has no idea how or why, but he knows she’s no ordinary player. She became a master of voluntary flight within seconds of starting the game when most people are still trying to get used to the sensation of a virtual body. She’s made several trips to and from Arun, a dangerous journey to make alone for a rookie, but so far, she hasn’t died a single time, according to her. People know her name.

“You’re not usually logged in at this time, are you?” he asks, frowning. He’ll usually see her online if he’s playing late, around midnight or so, before he has to log out to sleep. It makes him wonder what her life is like, because she’s said before that she also lives in Japan, so they have to be in the same time zone.

Catherine’s expression is distant, as if her mind is far away, but she responds promptly, “No, I usually play in the early mornings. But I’ll, ah, be online more now these days.”

“...Do you not sleep?” he asks flatly.

The smile she gives him is not a reassuring one. “Oh, I do. I’ve been living inside of a nightmare for a long time now. Quite frankly, I’m tired of being asleep.”

He’s left staring at her in abject confusion while she stretches like a cat, as if waking up from a long sleep like she said.

“Anyways, I’m gonna get going,” she says, turning to go with a little wave. “I think my connection is about to be cut soon, so I gotta get somewhere safe to pass out.”

Over the shimmery sound effect of her wings, he asks, “Why don’t you just log out?”

Every time this girl smiles, it makes him feel worse and worse.

“Because I don’t want to fall back asleep.”

~~~

She rents a room at an inn and sits down in the chair, leaning on the windowsill. Her parents said they’d be home by now, so she’s expecting her internet to cut out for a little while as they move her to the hospital, like it did in the beginning of SAO.

What will they think? What will the world think? Surely they won’t be able to keep this secret. Even though the government tried to keep it hushed up, every SAO player knows that she was the one who defeated the GM in the end, even if Kirito was the one who unmasked him, and most of the SAO players know she worked closely with him.

Some of them even think she’s _still_ working with him. Kikuoka seemed to. Maybe they’ll think he’s somehow roped her into his evil plots, like some cheesy movie plotline where the bad guy makes his big bad return in the sequel with his traitor sidekick. People will probably start freaking out again. It was bad enough that SAO happened, forcing thousands of unsuspecting gamers into a two-year-long game of death. Now someone is doing it again, but voluntarily? Oh, the horror.

Alfheim will probably be fine, though. Some people will stop playing it, definitely, but too many people already play it for whatever company running it to shut it down. There’s no way for them to know that she’s here, at least not right away—she threw out the disc case before logging in the first time.

If someone follows her in here, she can deal with it. She’s strong in this world, after all. But if she’s ever forced back into the real world...She shivers, bowing her head to rest it on the windowsill in her arms. There will be consequences, she’s sure of it.

But she’s made her choice. Her parents have surely discovered her state by now. There’s no going back.

_No regrets._

Her mind buzzes in a way that it never did in real life, categorizing everything she needs to do, sticking little flags on the map inside of her brain, calculating flight times, plus killing monsters and rest stops, and the cost and eventual benefits of various quests and jobs.

People may still not understand her in here, but there’s no need for them to. That’s the whole point of Catherine—in here, she can be anything. She can be powerful, and that means that people need her in here, and they can do that without having to know everything about her. In here, people know better than to ask about your real life. To Karma, it’s one and the same, but still, it doesn’t hurt. And knowing that people need her and value her skills...it’s a nice feeling.

And in here, she can’t hurt anyone the way she did before.

She had no value in the real world. A girl too old for high school and too directionless for college. A child with too much baggage and with it, the need to carry it all herself. She didn’t want anyone ‘helping’ her, didn’t want anyone knowing, and people didn’t like that; people liked being ‘helpful’, they liked living in their own world of false assumptions.

And they didn’t like it when she told them the truth, bared herself to them, because it meant they were wrong about her; it’s a very human thing to refuse to admit to being wrong.

~~~

As her internet connection fades in and out, her consciousness does too. She catches glimpses of the window as daylight fades to night. The sunset looks just as beautiful as it did in Aincrad. The replication doesn’t sit quite right with her.

She closes her eyes.

She ends up on the floor somehow. She must’ve fallen out of her chair. The floorboards are rough in a way that they never are in real life. It’s not the smooth stone brick floors of Granzam, but it’ll do. It’s not the real world, at least, and that’s enough.

She closes her eyes.

It’s Aincrad again, she thinks faintly the next time she drifts back down. Warmth surrounds her, gently scooping her up off the floor, cradling her in familiar arms.

It doesn’t even occur to her to be alarmed, and she purrs softly, melting. Her hand curls over her sternum, and she doesn’t have time to think about the missing weight around her neck before she’s cocooned by something soft.

She closes her eyes.

The world is gray and silver. Bright eyes, like molten steel. Long, slender fingers, brushing hair from her face with a tenderness she missed with all of what’s left of her heart.

She closes her eyes.

And when she opens them, she realizes that she hasn’t been awake since leaving Aincrad—not truly awake, and alive.

Until now.

Waking up to see him there is relaxing in a way that it shouldn’t be. It feels _normal_ , like if they were in the field, he was simply on the last watch and it’s morning now, time to press on to the next town. God, that was so long ago that they would’ve done anything like that, but it doesn’t feel like it’s been even a day.

Karma yawns widely and stretches, slowly propping herself up into a sitting position at a leisurely pace; he’s seen her in much worse states than ‘barely awake’. She rubs the sleep out of her eyes and blinks at the silhouette sitting in the chair next to her bed. Her eyes trace the sharp line of his jaw, proud cheekbones, thin silver eyebrows, his hairline, his broad shoulders and slender fingers knitted together in the lap of his long red robes.

Without thinking, she scoots closer, swinging her legs over the side of the bed, and reaches out to touch his face. He’s warm. And he’s close, in a way that she hasn’t let anyone else be. She traces her thumb under his eye, and a smile cracks through her own expression, a smile that feels more real than it has for a while. A broken little laugh that’s more breath than laughter escapes.

_I should hate you,_ she thinks to herself, with a smile on her face.

“Something funny on your mind?” he murmurs dryly, raising his eyebrows at her.

_God._ His voice. She thought she knew longing, but that was before she knew how much she missed hearing that voice, the same one that would tell her it would be okay, the same one that instilled such courage and resolve and strength in her, the same one that was used to take it all away.

She tips her head forward and lets her eyes slide shut, gently bumping their foreheads together affectionately, and wraps her arms around him, her hands curling into his robes between his shoulder blades where she put a knife in his back.

All of the memories they’ve shared, they’re all back now. She didn’t realize the colors were muted until they became so bright again. And that includes _those_ memories.

“Just thinking about how I always imagined bags under your eyes when you were being a sleep-deprived idiot,” she snickers, moving to snuggle her face against his shoulder.

He’s close enough that she can feel him chuckle before hearing it; it tapers off into a soft hum as he shifts. His arms reach up to encircle her in return, tentatively at first, then with more confidence when he realizes she won’t pull away. She can’t bring herself to, even knowing that she should, that she absolutely should be pushing him as far away as she can.

“How did you know I was here?”

With a little shrug, she mumbles, “Just knew, I guess.”

He sighs. “You shouldn’t be here,” he says with the voice of someone who knows better than to argue.

“And what are you going to do about it?” she retorts, letting out a soft snort. “I said I’d follow you anywhere.”

She promised. She _promised,_ and he forced her to break her promise-

Well, she doesn’t break her word so easily. This time, he’ll stay.

In response, he holds her a little tighter. “You’re sure?”

He doesn’t ask like he’s going to try and talk her into or out of something, just asks with that same outwardly neutral tone as always, giving her one last chance to think it through as well as his unspoken support regardless of her decision.

_I missed you._

All she says is, “I’m here, and so are you, right?” Her hands clutch at the back of his robes, clenching into fists. “We’re staying together this time.”

_You’re_ never _leaving me again._

One hand gently cups the back of her head as he mumbles, “I’d like that,” and a sob wells in her throat for reasons she can’t quite pin down.

In the real world, they hurt her without even understanding a single thing, without even _wanting_ to understand it. He hurt her in many ways, and he may do it again, but if she’s going to get hurt regardless, she would rather it come from someone who understands her better than she understands herself; then at least the scars can mean something more than ignorance and judgement. He has never judged her, never condemned her, and she knows he never will—how can he, when he’s just as much of a monster as she is?

They don’t even want her in the real world; they think she’s too broken as she is, and they don’t like it when she doesn’t want them trying to ‘fix’ her.

He wants her here, just as she is.

“Are you real?” she whispers, still keeping her eyes shut.

He hums, as if thinking about it. “As real as you want me to be.”

“Good. You’re mine,” she murmurs, echoing the words that she once spat at him with all the poisonous hatred she felt. Part of her wants to feel it again, to feel the urge to scream at him and hurt him and push him away, but she hasn’t the heart for it.

_I’ve been without you all this time. Whether this lasts a day or a year, I_ will _have this._

He laughs softly, as if she said something funny, and draws back, fingertips brushing her cheek, a low hum rumbling in his chest. “I always was, Karma.”

And when he says her name, the mask finally breaks; even as he gently cups her face in his hands to catch her tears, his expression is a perfect poker face that she learned to read along time ago, but in his steel gray eyes is uncertainty.

She’s not sure about much anymore either, but the one thing that she knows, even now, is that the spaces between his fingers are right where hers fit perfectly.

~~~

_they say that life will pass me by if I don’t open up my eyes; well, that’s fine by me -_ Wake Me Up (Avicii)

_and I hear voices screaming to run away, yet I see not black and white but silver and gray_ \- The Dark (Beth Crowley)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That last little bit about 'the spaces between his fingers are right where hers fit perfectly' was also from the song 'Vanilla Twilight', just not word for word.
> 
> Remember how she fell apart in the second-to-last chapter of Retribution? Basically, it's been that again, spread over ten chapters :D
> 
> So I've been building up her and Megu's breakdown for a while :D They were childhood best friends, but that's part of the problem in itself with how different Karma is from the person Megu knew for so long. Ironically, what tore Karma and Heathcliff apart (secrets and lies) was what tore her and Megu apart too, along with the spectacular trust issues that Karma now has after Heathcliff's betrayal. And yes, Karma is being a huge hypocrite, and she probably knows it, but unfortunately, she's also way past caring. And Megu does have a much more black-white world view, which can be a good thing at times, just not then. Still, she's not the only one who jumped to conclusions, and sadly, Karma's not going to give either of them the opportunity to think things through.
> 
> As for Heathcliff, well, I had to bring him back XD His and Karma's bond was one of the focal points of Retribution. Without something or someone that can fill the void he left, Karma can't let go of that, and honestly, neither can I. Is he an illusion? Is he a hallucination? Is he real? You can decide ;)
> 
> So yeah. Just gonna...leave all that here. Wouldn't want to get in the way of Quality Bonding Time between Sh*t and Fan :)


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really love this first song lyric. It's literally this story in a very big, very cracked, very fragile nutshell. And hey, look, the chapters are a reasonable length again XD (meanwhile the updates are getting slower lmao T.T)
> 
> (I was debating on using "I'm never going back, the past is in the past" from Let It Go for one of the lyrics last chapter, but I decided it was a little too on the nose XD)

_the ghost of your love drills a hole in my heart and it hinders my trust_ \- Sometimes Hearts Break (Nathan Wagner)

~~~

“You did what now?!”

As if she didn’t hear him perfectly well the first time, Heathcliff repeats slowly, “I scanned my brain using a more powerful version of a NerveGear and uploaded my-”

“I heard you just fine,” Karma snaps with no venom, pacing back and forth in the inn room. “So, you live in the internet now?”

He leans back in his seat with his ‘I enjoy nitpicking’ expression; she missed the feeling of wanting to punch it off his face sometimes. “Technically, I’m dead, but-”

She makes a high-pitched whine in the back of her throat. “Forget I asked.” Scowling, she pokes his face experimentally, ignoring when he pushes her hand away. “You seem real enough.” And he acts real enough; if he didn’t, she would know. “Although you don’t look like your real body.”

Heathcliff, dressed in his casual long, red KoB robes, simply shrugs his broad shoulders. “This is how you wished me to be—as you remembered in Sword Art Online.”

The mention of SAO draws the tension taut in her shoulders again, and she pushes her hand back through her hair with a sigh. “Forget it,” she repeats, shaking her head. “I’m gonna go get something to eat. Come on.”

He waffles and quietly complains all the way down the stairs, she drags him with her anyways, just like they always did. It’s four in the morning in Japan, so the inn is deserted except for the NPC, who doesn’t question the late (early, rather) hour and just asks what Karma wants to eat.

“Oh, and can I have some coffee too?” she asks, tacking it on at the end of her order.

Heathcliff slides onto the bar stool beside hers. As the NPC sets the coffee down, he grabs it before she has a chance to and takes a sip before she snatches it back. Yeah, it’s definitely him.

“That was mine!” she hisses indignantly; if she was a Cait Sith, her ears would be flat to her head, tail lashing.

“Which certainly didn’t stop you from stealing my coffee all the time, _Catherine,”_ he retorts flatly, and she glares. “Interesting handle choice, by the way.”

“Don’t get any ideas...Give me another coffee,” she finally says to the NPC.

He ends up stealing half of her breakfast too, apparently not satisfied with the coffee that _she’s_ going to end up paying for, and they eat and drink in silence, shoulders brushing occasionally, just like the two of them used to on early mornings, when it was just them in the mess hall as the sun broke the horizon.

In the back of her head, she figures they should probably talk about, well, _that._ Or something. But right now, it’s a comfortable kind of silence, if Karma ignores the memories she can’t erase, and she’s really good at pretending she’s not bothered by things, able to fool everyone, including herself sometimes, except the person sitting next to her.

And there is nothing to say that they both don’t already know; the truth is carved in her scars and she knows he’ll never forget either. Talk it out, everyone kept saying, it’ll make you feel better, but what’s the point of reopening old wounds when it won’t fix anything? She just got him back; she’s not going to risk driving him away.

While gazing regretfully at what’s left of her coffee and contemplating ordering another one, she notices suddenly that she’s leaned up against him, already settled in her place at his side without even realizing it. After contemplating moving for all of a half second, she lets a little more of her weight slump; he supports her easily, as if silently reminding her that she’ll always have a place here with him.

“You’ve been through a lot lately.”

One hand squeezes her empty coffee mug like a lifeline. “No thanks to you,” she whispers, unable to keep the sour green bitterness hidden. “Why couldn’t you have been there when I needed you most?” Like he always was before.

Before. What she would give to have her days of unknowing back.

“You didn’t want me there,” he says with a half shrug. “Not nearly enough, at least.”

The NPC collects the empty dishes and mugs, and her gloved fists clench on the countertop briefly before unfolding, one hand coming to rest unconsciously at her chest, where something is still missing.

“Do you have any idea,” she whispers, “how much you took from me?”

He weathers her storm in perfect stability. “Tell me,” he says.

She’s tempted. She knows he’ll listen.

Where does she start? Ever since she woke up, she’s wanted nothing more than to tell someone; still, the one person she thought she could confide in was nowhere to be found, and so even as she cracked from the inside out, it all stayed bottled up. Grief, for the way things once were. Longing, for the contentment born of ignorance. Loneliness, even when surrounded by her family and friends, because none of them understood the way she ached for a world that wanted her dead, a world in which she had real power; none of them understood the way she fell so inextricably in love.

She wanted to tell someone about the guilt that she was forced to drag with her from the virtual to the real world like a bag of rocks tied to a noose around her neck—guilt for everyone she’s killed, guilt for everyone else she was too slow, too weak, too ignorant to save, guilt for wanting to hurt someone and then following through on it. And the weight only got heavier each time that she had to hide everything from Megu when she would’ve once balked at the idea of keeping even a single secret from her, no matter how inane it was. It got heavier when she knew that everyone else was happy, her parents were happy, Megu was happy that Karma was back, everything was supposed to be great; it got heavier knowing that Karma was ruining it all.

Everyone said it was time to move forward, yet they could never know the weight of every step and every breath; she carried an entire castle’s worth of memories, all of a sudden dead weight, on her shoulders, around her neck, until she couldn’t breathe anymore.

She wanted to tell _someone,_ but it was missing, her ability to trust other people, because he took it with him when he left.

And he’s back now.

It’s everything she wanted. He’s everything she wanted. He’s everything. He is her grief, her longing, her loneliness, her guilt, and most of all, her trust.

The tiny little part of her that screams self-preservation, worn down a little each day, tells her to keep her mouth shut. To not give him anything more that he can wound her with, because if he does, she’s not sure how much she has left in her to give before there’s nothing left to take.

And the much, much bigger part of her that’s everything she was forced to keep bottled up in an unaccepting world, is _so lonely._

Humans don’t handle change well. Every part of her rebelled when she was forced to leave what she’d come to regard as her home; she only made that choice because she had hope for a better future, but it turned out to be only just a dream. And now she’s been given a chance to have her life back all over again.

And in the bottom of her heart, shot and stabbed with so many holes that there’s barely any of it left to give away, she knows that little part of her has lost when she asks in a tiny voice, “How do I know you won’t hurt me again?”

“You don’t.” And he knows her so, so well, like nobody else in the world does. “But I think you already knew and accepted that when you made your choice.”

And the worst part is that she knows that he would never hurt her just for the sake of it. She isn’t worth that effort. That held true even in Aincrad. He was never _trying_ to hurt her for something as superficial as causing pain. It just happened when he followed through with his plans despite knowing the outcome. It was just a side effect.

She was just...a side effect.

_It’s a little pathetic, knowing that her pain was so completely pointless to both sides._

Megu would yell at her, warn her that he’s trying to manipulate her, get in her head, but he never left it in the first place.

Maybe this isn’t smart, and maybe it doesn’t make any sense at all, and maybe it’s the worst decision she’s ever made, trusting the very person who took everything in the first place, but it’s a habit, almost, one that she picked up the moment she met him, and habit is easy. It’s simple.

Karma has always tried her best to think with her head and not her heart, and to save her own neck, she’s done her best to never make the same mistakes twice.

But the world isn’t black and white, and neither are rules; they exist to have exceptions.

And she needs to know.

~~~

As Japan begins to wake up, people start to log in. Karma sits by him, perched on the balcony of the Salamander keep, watching people start to mill about. She doesn’t feel like one of them anymore, not when they’re the ones living an alternate life.

“Do you think they’ll find me in here?”

At this, Heathcliff shrugs one shoulder, leaning on the sandstone next to her. “Well, first, they would have to know which game you’re in, and any AmuSphere game works in the NerveGear, so that doesn’t narrow it down by much, given the device’s popularity.”

“Mmm…” She hadn’t thought about that before making her choice. Hadn’t thought about much at all, to be honest.

“And the NerveGear should still work as it did with Sword Art Online,” he continues. “They won’t risk pulling it off your head, and it can run on a separate battery if they try disconnecting it from power. And if they couldn’t figure out how to force a logout from outside in two years, I think you’ve got at least some time.”

“And when that time runs out?” she mumbles, mostly talking to herself, but he hears her nonetheless.

“Then we’ll deal with it when we get there,” he states calmly, and she can’t help but feel a small glow of reassurance at the word ‘we’. It’s a strange sensation, this feeling of security, and she’s not quite sure she trusts it yet after going so long without, but she’ll get used to it. There’s time.

The sun is rising over the eastern horizon, and she soaks up the warmth, basking in the realism of the pleasant heat. Deserts get freezing at night, but they warm up in the blink of an eye during the day.

“The sun feels the exact same as it did in Aincrad,” she says out loud, holding out her cupped hands as if to let the sunlight pool in them.

He looks unsurprised and simply nods, holding out a hand as well, the light pouring through his slender fingers. “Do you know what happened to Argus?”

“...Argus?”

He gives her a mildly disbelieving look. “The company that produced Sword Art Online, and the NerveGear. I worked for them for over half a decade.”

“Ah.” She quickly looks away, lowering her hands, twisting her fingers together absently at the mention of his real identity. Now that she knows, what is there to hide, after all?

Some part of her still wishes she didn’t have to know.

“Argus was shut down, unsurprisingly,” Heathcliff sighs, not sounding too put out about it either. “The SAO server was transferred to the ownership of another company, RECT, which produced this game using the data from SAO. Alfheim runs on the same exact system that Aincrad did.”

Her gaze snaps to his. “Do people know?”

“Would they play it if they did?”

“But—that’s plagiarism.”

He looks mildly amused at her shock. “Of course it is. But the ones behind Alfheim never really cared about that.”

“That’s not fair!” she snaps, like a petulant child. “They just—they stole it?!”

Now Heathcliff looks really entertained—as much as he can, anyways. “Are you trying to defend me?” he asks, giving her a funny look.

“Aincrad,” she corrects him, standing up on the crenelations, one foot propped up on the higher part to point dramatically at him. “Defending Aincrad.” He stares, and she sighs, dropping her arm. “So yeah, basically.”

He snorts quietly and tugs at her cloak, making her sit back down. “Does it matter? You made your choice already. What does knowing this change?”

Nothing. It changes nothing. Indignation and righteous anger burn inside of her for this facsimile of the world she loved, the world that he poured all of himself and more into—that they _all_ poured some part of themselves into—but he’s right. What is there to do?

She has no choice but to stay, however fake it might feel.

“It’s just disappointing,” she complains, turning to sweep her gaze over the horizon, form the dark mountains of the Imps in the east, to the lush green Sylph forests of the west. “I guess nothing about this place is real.” She makes a face. “Least of all the people. You know how many roleplayers are in here? I thought the ones in Aincrad were bad enough, but these people are mildly insane, and it’s ridiculous.”

His eyes glitter like glass shards, a razor thin smile on his lips. “Aren’t we all playing make-believe in one way or another?”

Her fists clench, stretching the bright red fabric of her gloves, and she rolls backwards off the balcony without another word, with him right behind her. She slows to let him catch up, then flies literal circles around him, laughter coming so easily to her with him by her side; she missed his one of a kind look of unimpressed affection.

It doesn’t matter if this is make-believe, it doesn’t matter if it’s fake; it feels real, this lightness in her heart, compared to the weight of the real world, and that’s all that matters, and she’ll tell herself this until it becomes true.

~~~

With a fierce war cry, she beheads the desert cobra’s head, landing in a perfect crouch as the body thrashes for a moment before exploding into pixels. Beneath the wash of triumph, a tiny bit of discomfort pulses at the use of the exact same death sound and visual effects as SAO.

Heathcliff ambles over, having been a comfortable spectator the whole time. The mobs never targeted him, never gave him a single glance. Of course, Karma had no problem dealing with them all by herself, given her overpowered stats, but she’s starting to get a slight nagging feeling…

“See? It’s everything I had from SAO,” she says, swishing her sword through the air a few times before sheathing it at her hip again.

“It must have something to do with the NerveGear,” he says thoughtfully, brow furrowed, “and the identical system. It likely recognized your SAO avatar and ported over what it could.”

She hums. “Yeah, I was thinking the same thing...I’m not complaining, though. It’d suck if I had to start from square one. This way, I get to do what I want.” If she had to level up relying on the stronger members of her faction, she’d be bound by more rules and regulations, forced to be part of their machinations out of debt.

They keep walking while her wings recharge, and she talks aloud while she walks, glad to finally have someone listening. “I got all of the desert cobra skins for that Leprechaun, just gotta deliver them to Arun now...Said I’d go with a small guild in Parasel to help them clear a higher level quest…”

When night falls, they stop near a few spurs of reddish brown rock to eat. Karma shows him the world map, explains how she’s been exploring the world for the past two weeks or so. He offers advice, looking at the world from angles she wouldn’t have thought of, and they talk long into the night, planning routes and jobs to earn money and also do some sightseeing—after all, the world might be fraud but it’s still a pretty one. She talks over him sometimes in enthusiasm, memories sparking with a newfound excitement at the prospect of revisiting them with someone so close to her heart.

His presence next to her patches up the gaps; some of them were worth worlds and many more were pinpricks in comparison, but there were so many tiny things that she’d gotten used to as part of her life that without him, the infinitely small voids that each one left amounted to something that took away so much of herself.

It’s in the way he finishes her sentences, and vice versa. It’s in the way that he knows what she’s thinking before she can put it to words. It’s in the way that she doesn’t have to think twice before letting her head drop to his shoulder when she’s tired; it’s in the way he automatically shifts just a little like he always does to make her more comfortable.

It’s in the way he looks at her, like he admires and respects her, like he knows her, like she’s worth something; he looks at her like he’s glad she’s here, regardless of everything that came before, because he doesn’t _care_ about that and maybe he _should_ care like a normal person would, but it’s easier that he doesn’t.

It’s in the small things, and it makes her happy to exist.

She was happy in the real world too, for a little while. But that happiness felt like the kind that just kept her alive, nothing more and nothing less.

_This_ feels more like _living._

The fire pops and crackles merrily as Karma lays back to look up at the stars. They form different constellations than the ones in Aincrad, which were different on every Floor, each constellation with different tales of its own.

“I miss your office in Granzam,” she admits, exhaling as she closes her eyes. “Even your stupidly expensive desk.”

He snorts quietly. “Well, I don’t. Especially not all of that paperwork.”

“I don’t get why you programmed so much of that, only to have to do it yourself,” she says dryly, trying to get rid of the bitter taste in her mouth. It’s just... _different_ now, now that she knows everything, but different doesn’t _always_ have to be bad, she tells herself repeatedly.

“I don’t either,” he says, his tone flat as a cutting board. “Although many of them were messages from other guilds and such, not part of the game itself.”

She hums, closing her eyes, chest rising and falling peacefully. It’s funny—breathing isn’t even a necessity in VR, and yet it’s ten times easier to do so than it was in the real world. She’s breathing freedom now.

(It doesn’t taste as sweet as she thought it would, but she’ll get used to it. She will.)

The wind picks up, and she coughs and spits as sand flies over her face; the texture of it is disturbingly like real sand, and she’s reminded, again, why she likes the rest of Alfheim so much more than Salamander territory.

“I can’t wait to get out of this place,” she grouses, pulling her cloak up over her mouth.

Heathcliff moves so he’s blocking most of the sand flying into her face. “Get some sleep. I’ll keep watch.”

Not that he needs to. Karma has camped out in the open fields before, her sixth sense waking her up whenever mobs spawn near.

Karma narrows her eyes at him. “Oh, great. Do you actually, seriously not need sleep anymore? I can’t make fun of you about that anymore?”

His silver eyes roll as he reaches over and pointedly tugs her hood down over her face, to her indignation. “Go to sleep.”

“I miss making fun of you for that,” she whines, curling up under her short cloak.

And he would never admit it, but she takes his silence for ‘me too’.

The moon crawls higher and higher into the sky as the wind gusts over the open deserts, quietly moaning as it passes through the rocks jutting out from the ground where they’re camped. Heathcliff sits so still, he could pass for an unmoving stone statue.

Karma is reminded of when they were still in the lower floors, before the KoB had been officially created, and they were all equals, sharing most of the same duties, slogging their way from town to town through the wilderness of the dangerous, mob-infested fields. They would take turns on watch duty. She would always be near him, waking up for a few fuzzy moments while he took over watch to drag her bedroll over before curling up again, secure in the knowledge that he was near.

She ponders this for hours and hours, until Heathcliff finally sighs and says, “Let’s just press on to Arun.”

Something aches in her heart as she silently pushes herself up. It’s not guilt; it’s _not,_ she tells herself. It can’t be. She came here to escape it all, right?

The fire is still burning as a few tiny embers pulsing, and with a little mental willpower, she closes her fist to snuff it out, a wisp of smoke leaving the ashes, forlorn.

Neither of them make eye contact, or bring up why she hadn’t been sleeping. They don’t have to; their ability to read each other has barely changed at all—for better or worse.

As perhaps a sort of silent apology of sorts, she clasps his hand in hers as they kick off, doing their level best to leave that all behind on the ground.

~~~

Karma quickly realizes that her suspicions are correct—no one else can see him. Not monsters, not NPCs, not players. He can interact with the world (read: he can steal her coffee), and yet no one can see him still. She has no idea if they just see her coffee mug disappearing, or if something...glitches and causes them to forget? And she might’ve seriously considered that she was going insane and hallucinating all of this, except some of their behavior very much indicates that they are aware of his presence.

Somehow, everyone seems to walk around him, and the one time someone accidentally stumbled into their path, they walked right through him, which was definitely _weird_ to watch. And in a crowded tavern where she was trying to find more jobs, the house was packed because a popular NPC musician group was there, but the seat right next to her was always occupied by Heathcliff. If no one could see him, there should’ve just been an open space, but no one ever asked if they could sit down, instead electing to stand.

The space that always surrounds her is bigger than it should be for one person, isolating her from the rest of the world in yet one more way. It’s fine, though. It’s what she wanted.

“Why is this happening?” she muses out loud as they leave the tavern.

“Is it a bad thing?”

“No,” she admits. “It makes things easy. And it’d raise some questions I don’t feel like answering. I just want to know why.”

They can’t see the moon from within the shade of the World Tree, but the stars are still out, twinkling merrily down at them. They’re so much brighter than they were in the real world without light pollution, and gazing at them is much more enjoyable without the stench of car exhaust and the distant sounds of traffic to distract her.

“I think it’s fairly simple,” Heathcliff finally says, and she turns to look at him, both of them pausing in the middle of the street.

“Oh? Do tell.”

He shrugs his broad shoulders, stepping a little closer, hands clasped behind his back. “I’m all yours, aren’t I? Isn’t that what you wanted?”

She opens her mouth, then closes it, swallowing hard.

Yes, that’s what she wanted, with all of her heart. But...it feels raw, without some sort of buffer between them. It’s almost like nothing has changed, but everything has changed, yet he still knows everything about her—how she thinks, what she wants. And she wanted that; she wanted someone who understands her like he does, and he’s the only one-

She’s not scared of him, never was, but it’s scary how well he knows her as if not a day has passed, as if he never turned her world upside down, and she’s scared of what he might do to her in his indifference _(again)_. And the fear is foreign; it feels wrong, especially to associate it with him.

Everything is exactly how she wanted it when she decided to put on the NerveGear and never look back, _but it still feels wrong_ , and she doesn’t like that.

Finally, she gives a quiet hum of agreement, turning to continue on through the nighttime streets of Arun.

~~~

_I can still see your face, looking back through the flames, and I search it. was it worth it?_ \- Hindenburg Lover (Anson Seabra)

_they say heaven is a place where our pain is washed away, with no room for all the torment of the choices that we’ve made -_ Honest (Thousand Foot Krutch)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This whole story is just me letting them make bad choices and then going 'eVeRyThInG iS fInE'.
> 
> Anson Seabra's music is amazing too, by the way :D If Karma and Heathcliff have 'theme songs', I'd choose Sometimes Hearts Break for Karma (hence the title) and Hindenburg Lover for Heathcliff.
> 
> On a related note, I sort of got the idea for Heathcliff's reappearance from Anohana, actually (which, by the way, still makes me cry like a baby). At one point, I wrote a little AU (an AU for my OC, yes) where Karma died in Aincrad (while saving Heathcliff's life) and left him behind, only to come back to him later as a glitch or hallucination or ghost or something that only he can see and hear, making him wonder if she's real. Oh and also, I just remembered that in Wuthering Heights, (spoiler alert) Heathcliff is constantly haunted by the ghost of Catherine after her death, so there's that :D
> 
> By the way, 'waffles' is a surprisingly fun word.
> 
> Anyways, the last few chapters have been...not so happy. I know my favorite past time is making more grief for Karma, but do not worry! Things are going to start looking better.
> 
> _Looking_ better.


End file.
